Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying the longest daylight hours of the year ahead of the summer solstice, and across the world many may even be able to see a unique sunspot on the surface of our favorite star.  Summer stargazing season is quickly approaching, but summer skies can be hazy which makes  some celestial events difficult to see. But there is still plenty to see in the mild night skies this June. Here are some events to look out for and if you happen to get any stellar sky photos, tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: The Strawberry Moon, explained.]

June 1 and 2- Mars passes through Beehive star cluster

To kick off the month, Mars will be passing through a star cluster called the Beehive cluster or M44. It’s located in the crabby constellation Cancer, and Mars will appear as a brilliant red ruby surrounded by sparkly diamonds.  

To find Mars, first look for the bright planet Venus in the western sky. The two bright stars that are strung out to one side of Venus are the constellation Gemini’s twin stars Castor and Pollux. Mars should be the reddish light just above Venus, Pollux, and Castor. Binoculars and a dark sky will help you see a smattering of stars just beside Mars. 

The Beehive cluster is about 557 light-years away from Earth and is home to at least two planets. 

June 3 and 4- Full Strawberry Moon

June’s full moon will reach peak illumination at 11:43 PM EDT on June 3. Just after sunset, look in the southeastern sky to watch the moon rise above the horizon. June’s full moon is typically the last full moon of the spring or the first of the summer. 

The name Strawberry Moon is not a description of its color, but instead a reference to the ripening of “June-bearing” strawberries that are ready to be gathered and gobbled. For thousands of years, the  Algonquian, Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota peoples used this term to describe a time of great abundance. Some tribal nations in the northeastern US, including the Wampanoag nation, celebrate Strawberry Thanksgiving to show appreciation for the spring and summer’s first fruits. 

Other names for June’s full moon include the Gardening Moon or Gitige-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Moon of Birthing or Ignivik in Inupiat, and the River Moon or Iswa Nuti in the Catawba Language of the Catawba Indian Nation in South Carolina.

[Related: See hot plasma bubble on the sun’s surface in powerful closeup images.]

June 21- Summer Solstice

Summer officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere at 10:58 AM EDT on June 21 which marks the summer solstice. This is when the sun travels along its northernmost path in the sky. At the solstice, Earth’s North Pole is at its maximum tilt of roughly 23.5 degrees towards the sun. It is also the longest day of the year, and you can expect roughly 16 hours of daylight on June 21 in some spots in the Northeast.

After June 21, the sun appears to reverse course and head back in the opposite direction, towards the south, until the next solstice in December. 

June 27- Bootid Meteor Shower Maximum

June’s Bootid meteor shower begins on June 22, but it is expected to reach its peak rate of meteors around 7 PM EDT on June 27. The Bootid meteors should be visible when the constellation Bootes is just above the horizon. The moon will be in its first quarter phase at the shower’s peak, and will set at about 1:30 in the morning, making for minimal light interference later in the night. 

June’s Bootid meteor shower was created by the comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke and expected to last until July 2.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. Then, just sit back and let the summer skies dazzle.

The post A Strawberry Moon, solstice, and meteor shower will dance across the skies this June appeared first on Popular Science.

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Our solar system has a suite of eight planets—rocky Mars and Earth, the ice giants, and massive gas planets—but other stars often have a much smaller group. Some suns have just one exoplanet orbiting around them. These loner worlds are often one specific type: A huge gas giant that orbits very close to its star, known as a hot Jupiter.

A newly discovered exoplanet, however, has challenged this view, showing that maybe not all hot Jupiters go solo. Last week, astronomers announced that a hot Jupiter orbiting a star 400 light years away has a pal: It shares its solar system with WASP-84c, a rocky planet so large it’s known as a super-Earth. This discovery was made public as a preprint, a research paper that has yet to undergo peer review, and submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for official publication.

Hot Jupiters are a weird kind of planet. We don’t have any in our own solar system. Until the first was spotted, astronomers never expected them to exist. Gas giants like Jupiter usually only form far away from their stars, where things are cool enough for gas to stay safe from blazing solar heat. If a Jupiter-like planet has to be born at a distance, then, how can it get so close to its star? 

Astronomers have three main theories for how this happens. Two are gentle, and one is catastrophic. First, a hot Jupiter could move inward from its birthplace due to little gravitational nudges from the protoplanetary disk, a collection of dust and gas used to form planets in a star’s youth. Second, maybe we’re wrong about the theory that Jupiter-like planets must form far from stars. Instead, these planets are simply born where we see them. Both of these scenarios would allow hot Jupiters to have smaller friend planets hanging out nearby.

[Related: Ridiculously hot gas giant exoplanet is about to be swallowed by its dying sun]

But the third option is the most dynamic. Jupiters could form far out, but then encounter other planets that change the gas giants’ orbits. The gravity of the other planets would force a hot Jupiter into a stretched out, elliptical path, and then the gravity of the star would pull the gas giant in close, resulting in a circular, super-short orbit. In this violent dance, any low mass planets would be destroyed—creating the lonely hot Jupiter.

The best theory for the origin of this particular hot Jupiter, named WASP-84b, is the first—that a disk helped shepherd the planet through the solar system. Previous observations showed that the gas giant’s spin is aligned with the star’s, a sign that the large planet migrated within the protoplanetary disk instead of pinballing around with other planets. The discovery of super-Earth WASP-84c now adds more evidence to the case that this hot Jupiter formed with a nudge, not a planet-destroying bang—and that scenario may be more common than previously thought.

WASP-84c joins a growing list of smaller planetary buddies to hot Jupiters: WASP-47 b, Kepler 730 b, and WASP-132 b, to name a few. “The discovery of low-mass planetary companions like WASP-84c suggests that not all hot Jupiter systems formed under violent scenarios, as previously thought,” says lead author Gracjan Maciejewski from the Institute of Astronomy of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland.

Maciejewski and his colleagues used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to spot WASP-84c. TESS hunts for exoplanets using the transit method, where a telescope watches a star for teensy dips in its brightness, caused by a dark planet passing in front. 

[Related: A deep-space telescope spied an exoplanet so hot it can vaporize iron]

WASP-84c “was too small in radius to have been discovered by the original WASP survey, who discovered the hot Jupiter,” according to Caltech astronomer Juliette Becker, who is not affiliated with the new discovery. “It’s a great example of what TESS can do,” she adds.

With the transit method, astronomers can figure out a planet’s dimensions. However, to find out how much it weighs, they need different data, from another exoplanet-detecting technique known as the radial velocity method. When WASP-84c’s discoverers gathered this extra data, they determined that the planet has about 15 times the mass of Earth. Like our Blue Marble, it’s probably made of iron and rocks, too.

Jonathan Brande, a University of Kansas astronomer not involved in the discovery, thinks such discoveries will become even more common as the James Webb Space Telescope brings in new exoplanet data, deepening our understanding of how these planet pairs came to be. “I would not be surprised if we see further results on this system in the near future,” he says.

The post This hot Jupiter exoplanet unexpectedly hangs out with a super-Earth appeared first on Popular Science.

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Just in time for the light-filled days before the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) has released some stellar new images of the sun. Observations from the biggest and most powerful solar telescope on Earth show the movement of plasma in the solar atmosphere, intricate details of the sunspot regions, and the sun’s roiling convective cells. One of DKIST’s first-generation instruments, called the Visible-Broadband Imager, obtained these snaps of the sun that were released to the public on May 19.

The sunspots in the images are cool and dark regions on the sun’s “surface,” called the photosphere. Although sunspots are short-lived, strong magnetic fields persist here. The sunspots vary in size, but many are about the size of Earth, if not even bigger. Groups of sunspots can erupt in explosive events such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CME), which generate solar storms. Flares and CMEs influence the sun’s outermost atmospheric layer called the heliosphere, and these disturbances have a long reach, even messing with Earth’s infrastructure.

[Related: The sun’s chromosphere is shades of golden in these new images.]

Sunspot activity is also tied to cycles of about 11 years. During a cycle, sunspot and flare activity will rise to a peak solar maximum, when the sun’s poles switch places. Then the activity recedes, falling to almost zero at solar minimum. Our most recent solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, began in 2019, and is on the upswing: The next solar maximum is expected to take place in 2025.

Astronomers and solar physicists don’t know what creates sunspots or drives these solar cycles, but understanding more can help Earth prepare for CMEs. These ejections can hurl giant clouds of charged particles that slam into our planet’s magnetic field, affecting satellites, radio communications, and even the power grid. 

Not all CMEs wreak havoc, though. Some cause the colorful aurora borealis (or northern lights) in the Northern Hemisphere and aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere. In April, a CME generated a severe geomagnetic storm. While this geomagnetic storm was not disruptive, the northern lights it made were visible as far south as Arizona. 

[Related: How hundreds of college students are helping solve a centuries-old mystery about the sun.]

The images also show convection cells, which measure up to 994 miles across, in the sun’s quiet regions down to a resolution of about 12 miles. The convection cells give the protosphere, or the visible surface of the sun, a speckled popcorn-like texture, as piping hot plasma rises up from the cells’ center and then travels out to the edges before cooling and falling. 

In the layers of the solar atmosphere, the chromosphere sits above the photosphere. The chromosphere sometimes has dark hair-like threads of plasma called fibrils or spicules. They range from 125 to 280 miles in diameter and erupt up to the chromosphere from the photosphere and last only for a few minutes. 

We can expect to see more stunning images of the cells and other solar features in the coming years, as the solar telescope becomes fully operational. DKIST is named in honor of the late Hawaiian Senator Daniel K. Inouye, is the largest solar telescope in the world at 13 feet-wide. It rests on the peak of the mountain and volcano Haleakalā (or “House of the Sun”) on the island of Maui. It is currently in Operations Commissioning Phase, the observatory’s learning and transitioning period. Scientists will use the solar telescope’s unique ability to capture data in unprecedented detail to better understand the sun’s magnetic field and drivers behind solar storms.

The post See hot plasma bubble on the sun’s surface in powerful closeup images appeared first on Popular Science.

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In its two years and three months of exploring the Red Planet, NASA’s Perseverance Rover has been one busy moving Martian science lab. It has detected signs of past chemical reactions, begun building  a Martian rock depot, and recorded audio of a dust devil for the first time.

[Related: Mars’s barren Jezero crater had a wet and dramatic past.]

Here are a few of the “six-wheeled scientist’s” most recent highlights this month.

New Belva Crater images

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument collected 152 images while looking deep into Belva Crater. Belva is a large impact crater that lies within the far larger Jezero Crater, which is where Perseverance landed in 2021. The new images are dramatic to look at, but also provide the science team with new insights into Jezero crater’s interior. 

“Mars rover missions usually end up exploring bedrock in small, flat exposures in the immediate workspace of the rover,” deputy project scientist of Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Katie Stack Morgan said in a statement. “That’s why our science team was so keen to image and study Belva. Impact craters can offer grand views and vertical cuts that provide important clues to the origin of these rocks with a perspective and at a scale that we don’t usually experience.”

According to NASA, it is similar to a geology professor on Earth taking their students to visit highway “roadcuts.” These are places where rock layers and other geological features are visible after construction crews have sliced vertically into the rock. Belva Crater represents a natural Martian roadcut. 

The rover took the images on April 22– the mission’s 772nd Martian day, or “sol”. It was parked just west of Belva Crater’s rim on a light-toned rocky outcrop that Perseverance’s science team calls “Echo Creek.” This 0.6-mile-wide crater was created by a meteorite impact eons ago, and shows multiple locations of exposed bedrock and a region where the sedimentary layers angle downward. 

These steep “dipping beds” potentially indicate the presence of a large Martian sandbar that was deposited by a river channel flowing into the ancient lake that Jezero Crater once held. The science team believes that the large boulders in the crater’s foreground are either chunks of bedrock that the meteorite impact exposed, or the rocks were potentially carried to the crater by a long gone river system.

NASA says the team will continue to search for answers by comparing the features found in the bedrock near the rover with the larger larger-scale rock layers that are visible in the distant crater walls.

Ancient and wild Martian river

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument also took some new images that possibly show signs of an ancient Martian river. Some evidence shows that this rocky river was possibly very deep and incredibly fast. This now-dry river was part of a network of waterways that flowed into Jezero Crater.

[Related: Name a better duo than NASA’s hard-working Mars rover and helicopter.]

Better understanding of these watery environments could help scientists find signs of ancient microbial life that may have been preserved in the reddish-hued rocks of Mars.

The rover is exploring the top of an 820 feet tall fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock, with curving layers that suggest water once flowed there. Scientists want to answer whether the water flowed into relatively shallow streams like one that NASA’s Curiosity rover found evidence of in Gale Crater or if Jezero Crater’s was a more powerful river system.

When stitched together, the images come together like a patchwork quilt with evidence of a more raging river because of the coarse sediment grains and cobbles. 

“Those indicate a high-energy river that’s truckin’ and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it’s able to move larger pieces of material,” postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Libby Ives, said in a statement.

Ives has a background in studying Earth’s rivers, and spent the last six months analyzing images of Mars’ surface. “It’s been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar,” Ives said.

Both of these discoveries will help Perseverance’s astrobiology mission that includes the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will continue to characterize and study Mars’ geology and past climate, while paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and will also be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

The post Mars rover snaps pics of dusty craters that may have once roared with water appeared first on Popular Science.

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A team of more than 1,000 astronomers and college students just took a step closer to solving one of the long-lasting mysteries of astronomy: Why is the sun’s outer layer, known as the corona, so ridiculously hot? The solar surface is 10,000°F, but a thousand miles up, the sun’s corona flares hundreds of times hotter. It’s like walking across the room to escape an overzealous space heater, but you feel warmer far away from the source instead of cooler, totally contrary to expectations.

The research team used hundreds of observations of solar flares—huge ejections of hot plasma from our star’s surface—to determine what’s heating up the sun’s corona, in results published May 9 in The Astrophysical Journal. What’s really striking about this result, though, is how they did it: with the help of hundreds of undergrads taking physics classes at the University of Colorado, totaling a whopping 56,000 hours of work over multiple years.

Lead author James Paul Mason, research scientist and engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, calls this a “win-win-win scenario.” He adds, “We were able to harness a ton of brainpower and apply it to a real scientific challenge, the students got to learn firsthand what the scientific process looks like.”

[Related: Volunteer astronomers bring wonders of the universe into prisons]

The classroom project began in 2020, when University of Colorado physics professor Heather Lewandowski found herself teaching a class on experimental physics, which suddenly had to pivot online due to the COVID-19 pandemic—quite the challenge, especially for a hands-on science course. Luckily, Mason had an idea for a solar flare project that needed a lot of hands, and Lewandowski, who usually researches a totally different topic in quantum mechanics, saw that as an opportunity for her students. 

“The question of why the sun’s corona is so much hotter than the ‘surface’ of the sun is one of the main outstanding questions in solar physics,” says Lewandowski. There are two leading explanations for this dilemma, known as the coronal heating problem. One theory suggests that waves in the sun’s mega-sized magnetic field push heat into the corona. The other claims that small, unseen solar flares called nanoflares heat it up, like using a thousand matches instead of one big blow torch. 

Nanoflares are too small for our telescopes to spot, but by studying the sizes of other larger flares, scientists can estimate the prevalence of these little radiation bursts. And, although artificial intelligence is improving every day, automated programs can’t yet do the kind of analysis that Mason and Lewandowski needed. Groups of students in Lewandowski’s class each used data on a different solar flare, getting into nitty-gritty detail to measure how much energy each one dumped into the corona. Together, their results suggest nanoflares might not be powerful enough to heat up the corona to the wild temperatures we see.

[Related: Small ‘sparks’ on the sun could be key to forecasting dramatic solar weather]

The scientific result is only half of the news, though. Lewandowski and Mason pioneered a new way to bring real research into the classroom, giving students a way to not only learn about science, but do it themselves. This type of large-scale student research effort is more common in biology and chemistry, but was pretty much unheard of in physics—until now. “The students participated in all aspects of the research from literature review, meetings with the principal investigator, a proposal phase, data analysis, and peer review of their analysis,” says Lewandowski. The involvement of many students, and their work in groups, is also a reminder that “science is inherently a collaborative endeavor,” she adds.

“I hope that we inspire some professors out there to try this with their classes,” says Mason. “I’m excited to see what kinds of results they’re able to achieve.”

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It turns out that Saturn’s signature rings are a relatively new accessory. A study published May 12 in the journal Science Advances found that the planet’s colorful rings are no more than 400 million years old, while Saturn itself is about 4.5 billion years old.

[Related: Hubble telescope spies Saturn’s rings in ‘spoke season.’]

Saturn’s rings have captivated astronomers for over four centuries. In 1610, famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei first observed the rings using a telescope, but he did not know what they were. By the 19th century, a Scottish scientist named James Clerk Maxwell concluded that the rings couldn’t be solid, but were actually made up of many individual pieces. 

Throughout the 20th century, it was assumed that the rings came about at the same time as Saturn. This raised some questions, particularly why the rings were sparkling clean. To figure out why, the team on this study looked closely at an object that annoys allergy sufferers and neatniks alike–dust. Tiny grains of rocky material constantly wash through the solar system and this flux of material can leave behind a thin layer of dust on planetary bodies– including Saturn’s icy rings. Like running your finger along the dusty surface of an old house, the team used these dust layers to see how quickly the layer builds on Saturn’s rings.

“Think about the rings like the carpet in your house,” study co-author and physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder Sascha Kempfsaid Kempf said in a statement. “If you have a clean carpet laid out, you just have to wait. Dust will settle on your carpet. The same is true for the rings.”

From 2004 to 2017, the team used an instrument aboard NASA’s late Cassini spacecraft called the Cosmic Dust Analyzer. The bucket-shaped Cosmic Dust Analyzer scooped up small particles as they whizzed by. 

The team collected 163 grains over 13 years that had all originated from beyond Saturn’s close neighborhood. Using the grains, they calculated that Saturn’s rings have likely been gathering dust in space for only a few hundred million years–making them relatively new in space terms. 

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.]

“We know approximately how old the rings are, but it doesn’t solve any of our other problems,” Kempf said. “We still don’t know how these rings formed in the first place.”

The team estimated that this interplanetary grime would add far less than a single gram of dust to each square foot on Saturn’s rings every year. This is not a lot of dust, but would still add up over millions of years. 

Scientists now know that the seven rings are made of countless ice chunks, most of which are about the size of a boulder. The ice of the rings weighs about half as much as Saturn’s moon Mimas and stretches close to 175,000 miles from the planet’s surface. 

Future studies into the space dust could reveal more about planetary age, thanks to a more sophisticated dust analyzer that will be aboard NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission. This mission is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and will explore Jupiter’s moon Europa and if this icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life.

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Best overall		Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ		SEE IT	A solid build and specs, paired with smartphone-guided sky recognition technology, makes this telescope perfect for starry-eyed explorers.
Best for viewing planets		Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope		SEE IT	This telescope punches above its weight class in size and power, making it an ideal scope for checking out neighboring orbs.
Best for kids		Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit		SEE IT	The entire package is designed to inspire kids during the window where they stare curiously out of the windows.

Telescopes under $500 can provide a passport to the universe without emptying your wallet. In their basic function, telescopes are our connection to the stars. For millennia, humankind has gazed skyward with wonder into the infinite reaches of outer space. And as humans are a curious bunch, our ancestors devised patterns in the movements of celestial bodies and gave them names and built stories around them. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks indulged in star worship. But you don’t have to follow those lines to geek out over the vastness of the night sky. It’s just so cool. Fortunately, whatever your motivation for getting under the stars, there is an affordable option for you on our list of the best telescopes under $500.

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope
• Best for astrophotography: William Optics Guide Star 61
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit
• Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

How we chose the best telescopes under $500

The under-$500 telescope market is crowded with worthy brands and models, so we looked at offerings in that price range from several well-known manufacturers in the space. After narrowing our focus based on personal experience, peer suggestions, critical reviews, and user impressions, we considered aperture, focal length, magnification, build quality, and value to select these five models.

The best telescopes under $500: Reviews & Recommendations

To get the best views of the stars, planets, and other phenomena of outer space, not just any old telescope will get the job done. There are levels of quality and a wide range of price points and features to sort through before you can be sure you’re making the right purchase for what you want out of your telescope, whether it’s multi-thousands or one of the best telescopes for under $1,000, or one of our top picks under $500.

Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ

Celestron

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: Solid build and specs, paired with the remarkable StarSense Explorer app, make this telescope a perfect introduction to celestial observation.

Specs

• Focal length: 650mm
• Aperture: 130mm, f/5
• Magnification: 65x, 26x

Pros

• App aids in finding stars
• Easy to operate
• Steady altazimuth mount

Cons

• Eyepieces are both low power

Newbies to astronomy today can have a decidedly different experience than beginners who started stargazing before smartphones were a thing. Instead of carting out maps of the night sky to find constellations, the StarSense Explorer series from Celestron, including the DX 130AZ refractor, makes ample use of your device to bring you closer to the stars. 

With your smartphone resting in the telescope’s built-in dock, the StarSense Explorer app will find your location using the device’s GPS and serve up a detailed list of celestial objects viewable in real time. Looking for the Pleiades cluster? This app will tell you how far away it is from you and then lead you there with on-screen navigation. The app also includes descriptions of those objects, tips for observing them, and other useful info. 

The StarSense Explorer ships with an altazimuth mount equipped with slow-moving fine-tuning controls for both axes so you can find your target smoothly. And for those times you want to explore the night sky without tethering a smartphone, the scope’s red dot finder will help you zero in on your targets. The two eyepieces, measuring 25mm and 10mm, are powerful enough to snag stellar views of the planets but not quite enough to see the details a high-powered eyepiece would deliver.

Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope

Sky-Watcher

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Why it made the cut: This telescope punches above its weight class in size and power, making it an ideal scope for viewing planets.

Specs

• Focal length: 1300mm
• Aperture: 102mm, f/12.7
• Magnification: 130x, 52x

Pros

• Great for viewing planets and galaxies
• Sharp focus and contrast
• Powerful

Cons

• Not ideal for deep-space viewing

Let’s be real—most consumers in the market for a moderately priced telescope are in it to gain spectacular views of the planets and galaxies, but probably not much else. And it’s easy to see why. Nothing makes celestial bodies come alive like viewing them in real time, in all their colorful glory.

If that sounds like you, allow us to direct you to the Sky-Watcher Skymax 102, a refracting telescope specializing in crisp views of objects like planets and galaxies with ample contrast to make them pop against the dark night sky. The Skymax 102 is based on a Maksutov-Cassegrains design that uses both mirrors and lenses, resulting in a heavy-hitting scope in a very compact and portable unit. A generous 102mm aperture pulls in plenty of light to illuminate the details in objects, and the 1300mm focal length results in intense magnification.

Two included wide-angle eyepieces measuring 25mm and 10mm deliver 130x and 52x magnification, respectively. The package also includes a red-dot finder, V-rail for mounting, 1.25-inch diagonal viewing piece, and a case for transport and storage. Look no further if you’re looking for pure colors across a perfectly flat field in a take-anywhere form factor.

Best for astrophotography: William Optics GuideStar 61 

William Optics

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Why it made the cut: Top-notch specs and an enviable lens setup make this telescope ideal for astrophotography.

Specs

• Focal length: 360mm
• Aperture: f/5.9
• Magnification: 7x (with 2-inch eyepiece)

Pros

• Well-appointed specs
• Sturdy, durable construction
• Carrying case included

Cons

• Flattener is an extra purchase

Sometimes you want to share more than descriptions of what you see in the night sky, and that’s where this guidescope comes in, helping you to focus on the best full-frame image. You can go as deep into the details (not to mention debt) as your line of credit will allow in your quest to capture the most impressive images of space. Luckily, though, this is a worthy option at a reasonable price. 

The Williams Optics Guide Star 61 telescope is a refracting-type scope with a 360mm focal length, f/5.9 aperture, and 61mm diameter well-suited to capturing sharp images of planets, moon, and bright deep-sky objects. The GS61 shares many specs with the now-discontinued Zenith Star 61, including focal length, aperture, and diameter, as well as the FPL53 ED doublet lens for high-contrast images.

The scope’s optical tube is about 13 inches long and weighs just 3 lbs.—great for traveling with the included carrying case—with a draw-tube (push-pull) focuser for coarse focusing and a rotating lens assembly for fine focus. Attaching a DSLR camera to the Guide Star 61 is a fairly easy job, but note that the flattener for making that connection is a separate purchase.

Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit

Orion

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Why it made the cut: The entire package is designed to get kids exploring space right out of the box.

Specs

• Focal length: 700mm
• Aperture: 60mm, f/11.7
• Magnification: 70x, 28x

Pros

• Capable of detailed views of moon and planets
• Lightweight construction
• Lots of handy accessories

Cons

• Not enough optical power to reach deep space

Parents have a limited window of time to recognize and develop their kids’ interests. That’s what makes the Orion Observer II such a great buy. Seeing the craters on the moon or the rings of Saturn for the first time can affirm your kids’ curiosity about space and expand their concept of the universe—and they can get those goosebumps while learning through this altazimuth refractor telescope.

The Orion Observer II is built to impressive specifications, with a 700mm focal length that provides 71x magnification for viewing the vivid details of planets in our solar system. True glass lenses (not plastic) are a bonus at this price point, and combined with either included Kellner eyepieces (25mm and 10mm), the telescope delivers crisp views of some of space’s most dazzling objects. 

Kids and parents can locate celestial objects with the included red-dot finder. The kit also includes MoonMap 260, a fold-out map that directs viewers to 260 lunar features, such as craters, valleys, ancient lava flows, mountain ranges, and every U.S. and Soviet lunar mission landing site. An included copy of Exploring the Cosmos: An Introduction to the Night Sky gives a solid background before they go stargazing. And with its aluminum tube and tripod, the entire rig is very portable, even for young ones, with a total weight of 4.3 pounds.

Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

Celestron

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Popular Science has teamed up with Celestron on a line of products. The decision to include this model in our recommendations was made by our reviewer independently of that relationship, but we do earn a commission on its sales—all of which helps power Popular Science.

Why it made the cut: With its feature set, portability, and nice price point, this scope is ready for some serious stargazing without a serious investment.

Specs

• Focal length: 400mm
• Aperture: 70mm, f/5.7
• Magnification: 168x

Pros

• Bluetooth remote shutter release
• Ships with two eyepieces
• Pack included

Cons

• Lacks optical power for deep space

Getting out of town, whether you’re camping in the wilderness or taking a drive in the countryside, is one of the attractions of stargazing. Out in the great wide open, far away from streetlights, the stars explode even to the naked eye. Add a handy telescope like the Popular Science Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope—our pick for the best portable telescope under $500—and you’ll see much farther into space. The fact that it’s as affordable as it is moveable just adds to the value.

The Popular Science Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope is a well-equipped refractor telescope built for backpacking and adventuring but without skimping on cool gadgets. Whether you’re gazing at celestial or terrestrial objects, the smartphone adapter will aid you in capturing images with your personal device, with an included Bluetooth remote shutter release.

Designed with portability and weight in mind, the entire package fits into an included pack with a total of 3.3 pounds—that includes the telescope, tripod stand, 20mm and 10mm eyepieces, 3x Barlow lens, and more. Download Celestron’s Starry Night software to help you get the most from your astronomy experience. 

Here are some other options from the Celestron and Popular Science collaboration:

• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 100AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope
• Popular Science AstroMaster 80mm – Portable Refractor Telescope
• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 5” Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope 
• Popular Science by Celestron Outland X 12x50mm Monocular with Tripod, Smartphone Adapter, and Bluetooth remote

What to consider when buying the best telescopes under $500

Optics

There are three types of optics available on consumer telescopes, and they will help you achieve three different goals. Refractor telescopes use a series of glass lenses to bring celestial bodies like the moon and near planets into focus easily. Reflector telescopes—also known as Newtonian scopes for their inventor, Sir Isaac Newton—swap lenses for mirrors and allow stargazers to see deeper into space. Versatile compound telescopes combine these two methods in a smaller, more portable form factor, with results that land right in the middle of the pack. 

Aperture

Photographers will recognize this: The aperture controls the amount of light entering the telescope, like on a manual camera. Aperture is the diameter of the lens or the primary mirror, so a telescope with a large aperture draws more light than a small aperture, resulting in views into deeper space. F-ratio is the spec to watch here. Low f-ratios, such as f/4 or f/5, are usually best for wide-field observation and photography, while high f-ratios like f/15 can make deep-space nebulae and other bodies easier to see and capture. Midpoint f-ratios can get the job done for both.

Mounts

All the lens and mirror power in the world won’t mean much if you attach your telescope to a subpar mount. In general, the more lightweight and portable the tripod mount, the more movement you’ll likely get while gazing or photographing the stars. Investing in a stable mount will improve the viewing experience. The two common mount types are alt-az (altitude-azimuth) and equatorial. Altazimuth mounts operate in the same way as a camera tripod, allowing you to adjust both axes (left-right, up-down), while equatorial mounts also tilt to make it easier to follow celestial objects.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best telescopes under $500

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope
• Best for astrophotography: William Optics Guide Star 61
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit
• Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

Although this group of sub-$500 scopes is fairly diverse, the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ stands out in our best telescopes under $500 as the best place to start your interstellar journey due to its versatility and sky recognition app, which make for a fun evening of guided tours through the star patterns, no experience necessary. 

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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At least 83 moons orbit Saturn, and experts believe its most reflective one could harbor life underneath its icy surface. To find out, NASA scientists hope to send a massive serpentine robot to scour Enceladus, both atop its frozen ground—and maybe even within a hidden ocean underneath.

As CBS News highlighted on Monday, researchers and engineers are nearing completion of their Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) prototype. The 16-foot-long, 200-pound snakelike bot is capable of traversing both ground and watery environments via “first-of-a-kind rotating propulsion units,” according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These repeating units could act as tracks, gripping mechanisms, and underwater propellers, depending on the surrounding environment’s need. The “head” of EELS also includes 3D mapping technology alongside real-time video recording and transmission capabilities to document its extraplanetary adventure.

[Related: Saturn’s rings have been slowly heating up its atmosphere.]

In theory, EELS would traverse the surface of Enceladus towards one of the moon’s many “plume vents,” which it could then enter to use as a passageway towards its oceanic source. Over 100 of these vents were discovered at Enceladus’ southern pole by the Cassini space probe during its tenure around Saturn. Scientists have since determined the fissures emitted water vapor into space that contained amino acids, which are considered pivotal in the creation of lifeforms.

To assess its maneuverability, NASA researchers have already taken EELS out for test drives in environments such as an ice skating rink in Pasadena, CA, and even an excursion to Athabasca Glacier in Canada’s Jasper National Park. Should all go as planned, the team hopes to present a finalized concept by fall 2024. But be prepared to wait a while to see it in action on Enceladus—EELS’ journey to the mysterious moon would reportedly take roughly 12 years. Even if it never makes it there, however, the robotic prototype could prove extremely useful closer to Earth, and even on it. According to the Jet Propulsion Lab, EELS could show promise exploring the polar caps of Mars, or even ice sheet crevasses here on Earth.

[Related: Saturn has a slushy core and rings that wiggle.]

Enceladus’ fascinating environment was first unveiled thanks to NASA’s historic Cassini space probe. Launched in 1997, the satellite began transmitting data and images of the planet and its moons back to Earth after arriving following a 7 year voyage. After 13 years of service, a decommissioned Cassini descended towards Saturn, where it was vaporized within the upper atmosphere’s high pressure and temperature. Although NASA could have left Cassini to cruise sans trajectory once its fuel ran out, they opted for the controlled demolition due to the slim possibility of crashing into Enceladus or Titan, which might have disrupted the potential life ecosystems scientists hope to one day discover. 

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Uranus’ four largest moons could very likely be home to an ocean layer dozens of miles deep between their icy crusts and deep cores. A new analysis from NASA published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, could help determine how a future mission to Uranus might investigate the seventh planet from the sun’s moons, but also has implications that go beyond Uranus.

[Related: Expect NASA to probe Uranus within the next 10 years.]

At least 27 moons circle Uranus. The four largest are about two to three times smaller than  Earth’s moon, with Ariel at about 720 miles across and the largest, Titania, at 980 miles across. Titania’s size has long led scientists to believe that it is the most likely satellite to retain internal heat that is caused by radioactive decay. Uranus’ other moons were believed to be too small to retain the head that is necessary to keep an internal ocean from freezing since the heating created by Uranus’ gravitational pull is only a minor source of heat.  

This new analysis uses data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft and some new computer modeling looked at all of the planet’s five large moons: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, and Miranda. Of these large moons, Titania and Oberon orbit the farthest from Uranus, and these possible oceans could be dwelling 30 miles below the surface. Ariel and Umbriel may have oceans 19 miles deep. 

“When it comes to small bodies – dwarf planets and moons – planetary scientists previously have found evidence of oceans in several unlikely places, including the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, and Saturn’s moon Mimas,” co-author and planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Julie Castillo-Rogez said in a statement.  “So there are mechanisms at play that we don’t fully understand. This paper investigates what those could be and how they are relevant to the many bodies in the solar system that could be rich in water but have limited internal heat.”

The new study revisited the data from Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus during the 1980s and from more recent ground-based observations. The authors then built computer models using additional findings from NASA’s Galileo, Cassini, Dawn, and New Horizons missions (which all discovered ocean worlds), and insights into the chemistry and the geology of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Pluto and its moon Charon, and Ceres. These Plutonian and Saturnian moons are all icy bodies about the same size as the Uranian moons.

The team used the modeling to gauge how porous the surface of the Uranian moons are, and found that they are likely insulated enough to retain that internal heat needed to host an ocean. Additionally, the models found a potential heat source in the moons’ rocky mantles. These sources release hot liquid that would help an ocean maintain a warm environment. This warming scenario is especially likely in the moons Titania and Oberon, where the oceans could  even be warm enough to support some sort of lifeforms. 

[Related: Ice giant Uranus shows off its many rings in new JWST image.]

Investigating the composition of these oceans can help scientists learn about the materials that may be found on the icy surfaces of the moons as well, depending on whether or not the substances underneath were pushed up from below by internal geological activity. Evidence from telescopes shows that at least one of the moons (Ariel) has material on it that flowed onto its surface relatively recently, possibly from icy volcanoes. 

Miranda, the innermost and fifth largest Uranian moon, also hosts surface features that may be of recent origin, which suggests it may have held enough heat to maintain an ocean at some points. However, recent thermal modeling found that Miranda likely didn’t host that water for very long, since the moon loses heat too quickly and the ocean is probably frozen now.

Another key finding in the new study suggests that chlorides and ammonia are likely abundant in the oceans. Ammonia can act as an antifreeze, and the author’s modeling suggests that the salts that are likely present in the water would be another source of temperature regulation  that maintains the bodies’ internal oceans.

Digging down into the inner workings of a moon’s surface could help scientists and engineers choose the best instruments to survey them in future missions, but there are still many questions about Uranus’ large moons and work to be done.

“We need to develop new models for different assumptions on the origin of the moons in order to guide planning for future observations,” Castillo-Rogez said.

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NASA officials have talked for years about using the moon as a stepping stone to explore Mars. But now the space agency is finally reorganizing its administration to crystallize that aim in its bureaucratic structure. At the end of March, NASA established the new Moon to Mars Program Office at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. 

This office will unify an array of programs already under way: This includes the goals of NASA’s Artemis Moon mission, such as creating spacesuits for lunar astronauts as well as the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which successfully flew the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in November. These projects will be more formally linked to developing technologies and operations for future human journeys to Mars. 

“This new office will help ensure that NASA successfully establishes a long-term lunar presence needed to prepare for humanity’s next giant leap to the Red Planet,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. 

In the 2022 NASA Authorization Act, Congress mandated that NASA create the Moon to Mars Program Office to ensure that each Artemis lunar mission “demonstrates or advances a technology or operational concept that will enable human missions to Mars.” Following the successful Artemis I test flight, NASA aims to launch four astronauts on a lunar flyby mission for Artemis II in late 2024, and return humans to the moon’s surface in 2025 with Artemis III. Subsequent Artemis missions, at a pace of every other year, should allow astronauts to build a lunar habitat on the moon’s South Pole—with plans to stay for a while. 

[Related: NASA finally got comfier spacesuits, but astronauts still have to poop in them]

“We are going to the moon, we are demonstrating and executing a more sustained presence than we did back on Apollo, historically,” Lakiesha Hawkins, deputy manager of the new office, tells Popular Science. “The demonstrations that we’re doing are setting us up so that we can stay for a long duration; we can, in essence, live off the land.”

NASA astronauts will run experiments to obtain water from ice in lunar craters and to melt lunar regolith, or rocky material, to extract oxygen. They’ll also practice operations and procedures as if they are on Mars, with intentionally prolonged delays in communications to Earth and help all but unavailable. On the moon, these explorers will test the reliability of life support and other systems with an eye toward the Red Planet. “The further we go, the less and less we’ll be able to look back to any capabilities of the home planet in order to help us,” Hawkins says. 

At the moment, the Moon to Mars Program Office is still getting set up and hiring for key roles, according to Hawkins, but some changes have already begun. 

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’]

“One of the things that I think is an obvious change is, we used to have three different divisions,” she says, one division for SLS, Orion, and ground systems; another for a planned lunar space station called Gateway, a lunar lander spacecraft, spacesuits, and lunar surface technologies; and then a third division focused on Mars technologies and capabilities. Those are now merged under the Moon to Mars Program Office. Aligning these offices is “going to help set us up for future success,” Hawkins says.

And while the changes so far are largely administrative, Hawkins sees the Congressional mandate as vindication of NASA’s approach to our nearest extraterrestrial neighbors. “We seem to have a clear strategy that has survived and works. It worked its way through now multiple presidential administrations,” she says. “We are no kidding, returning to the moon.” And after that, eventually, on to Mars. 

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This article was original featured on MIT Press.This article is excerpted from Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo’s book “Tales From a Robotic World.”

In the early 2010s, a new trend in robotics began to emerge. Engineers started creating robotic versions of salamanders, dragonflies, octopuses, geckos, and clams — an ecosystem of biomimicry so diverse the Economist portrayed it as “Zoobotics.” And yet Italian biologist-turned-engineer Barbara Mazzolai raised eyebrows when she proposed looking beyond animals and building a robot inspired by a totally different biological kingdom: plants. As fluid as the definition of the word robot can be, most people would agree that a robot is a machine that moves. But movement is not what plants are famous for, and so a robotic plant might at first sound, well, boring.

But plants, it turns out, are not static and boring at all; you just have to look for action in the right place and at the right timescale. When looking at the lush vegetation of a tropical forest or marveling at the colors of an English garden, it’s easy to forget that you are actually looking at only half of the plants in front of you. The best-looking parts, maybe, but not necessarily the smartest ones. What we normally see are the reproductive and digestive systems of a plant: the flowers and fruits that spread pollen and seeds and the leaves that extract energy from sunlight. But the nervous system, so to speak, that explores the environment and makes decisions is in fact underground, in the roots.

Roots may be ugly and condemned to live in darkness, but they firmly anchor the plant and constantly collect information from the soil to decide in which direction to grow to find nutrients, avoid salty soil, and prevent interference with the roots of other plants. They may not be the fastest diggers, but they’re the most efficient ones, and they can pierce the ground using only a fraction of the energy that worms, moles, or manufactured drills require. Plant roots are, in other words, a fantastic system for underground exploration — which is what inspired Mazzolai to create a robotic version of them.

“It forced us to rethink everything, from materials to sensing and control of robots.”

Mazzolai’s intellectual path is a case study in interdisciplinarity. Born and raised in Tuscany, in the Pisa area that is one of Italy’s robotic hot spots, she was fascinated early on by the study of all things living, graduating in biology from the University of Pisa and focusing on marine biology. She then became interested in monitoring the health of ecosystems, an interest that led her to get her doctorate in microengineering and eventually to be offered by Paolo Dario, a biorobotics pioneer at Pisa’s Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, the possibility of opening a new research line on robotic technologies for environmental sensing.

It was there, in Paolo Dario’s group, that the first seeds of her plant-inspired robots were planted. Mazzolai got in touch with a group at the European Space Agency (ESA) in charge of exploring innovative technologies that looked interesting but were still far away from applications, she recalls. While brainstorming with them, she realized space engineers were struggling with a problem that plants brilliantly solved several hundred million years ago.

“In real plants, roots have two functions,” says Mazzolai. “They explore the soil in search of water and nutrients, but even more important, they anchor the plant, which would otherwise collapse and die.” Anchoring happens to be an unsolved problem when designing systems that have to sample and study distant planets or asteroids. In most cases, from the moon to Mars and distant comets and asteroids, the force of gravity is weak. Unlike on Earth, the weight of the spacecraft or rover is not always enough to keep it firmly on the ground, and the only available option is to endow the spacecraft with harpoons, extruding nails, and drills. But these systems become unreliable over time if the soil creeps, provided they work in the first place. They didn’t work for Philae, for example, the robotic lander that arrived at the 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko comet in 2014 after a 10-year trip only to fail to anchor at the end of its descent, bouncing away from the ground and collecting just a portion of the planned measurements.

In a brief feasibility study carried out between 2007 and 2008 for ESA, Mazzolai and her team let their imagination run free and described an anchoring system for spacecrafts inspired by plant roots. The research group also included Stefano Mancuso, a Florence-based botanist who would later gain fame for his idea that plants display “intelligent” behavior, although of a completely different sort from that of animals. Mazzolai and her team described an ideal system that would reproduce, and transfer to other planets, the ability of Earth plants to dig through the soil and anchor to it.

In the ESA study, Mazzolai imagined a spacecraft descending on a planet with a really hard landing: The impact would dig a small hole in the planetary surface, inserting a “seed” just deep enough in the soil, not too different from what happens to real seeds. From there, a robotic root would start to grow by pumping water into a series of modular small chambers that would expand and apply pressure on the soil. Even in the best-case scenario, such a system could only dig through loose and fine dust or soil. The root would have to be able to sense the underground environment and turn away from hard bedrock. Mazzolai suggested Mars as the most suitable place in the solar system to experiment with such a system — better than the moon or asteroids because of the Red Planet’s low gravity and atmospheric pressure at surface level (respectively, 1/3 and 1/10 of those found on Earth). Together with a mostly sandy soil, these conditions would make digging easier because the forces that keep soil particles together and compact them are weaker than on Earth.

At the time, ESA did not push forward with the idea of a plant-like planetary explorer. “It was too futuristic,” Mazzolai admits. “It required technology that was not yet there, and in fact still isn’t.” But she thought that others beyond the space sector would find the idea intriguing. After transitioning to the Italian Institute of Technology, in 2012, Mazzolai convinced the European Commission to fund a three-year study that would result in a plant-inspired robot, code-named Plantoid. “It was uncharted territory,” says Mazzolai. “It meant creating a robot without a predefined shape that could grow and move through soil — a robot made of independent units that would self-organize and make decisions collectively. It forced us to rethink everything, from materials to sensing and control of robots.”

The project had two big challenges: on the hardware side, how to create a growing robot, and on the software side, how to enable roots to collect and share information and use it to make collective decisions. Mazzolai and her team tackled hardware first and designed the robot’s roots as flexible, articulated, cylindrical structures with an actuation mechanism that can move their tip in different directions. Instead of the elongation mechanism devised for that initial ESA study, Mazzolai ended up designing an actual growth mechanism, essentially a miniature 3D printer that can continuously add material behind the root’s tip, thus pushing it into the soil.

It works like this. A plastic wire is wrapped around a reel stored in the robot’s central stem and is pulled toward the tip by an electric motor. Inside the tip, another motor forces the wire into a hole heated by a resistor, then pushes it out, heated and sticky, behind the tip, “the only part of the root that always remains itself,” Mazzolai explains. The tip, mounted on a ball bearing, rotates and tilts independent of the rest of the structure, and the filament is forced by metallic plates to coil around it, like the winding of a guitar string. At any given time, the new plastic layer pushes the older layer away from the tip and sticks to it. As it cools down, the plastic becomes solid and creates a rigid tubular structure that stays in place even when further depositions push it above the metallic plates. Imagine winding a rope around a stick and the rope becomes rigid a few seconds after you’ve wound it. You could then push the stick a bit further, wind more rope around it, and build a longer and longer tube with the same short stick as a temporary support. The tip is the only moving part of the robot; the rest of the root only extends downward, gently but relentlessly pushing the tip against the soil.

The upper trunk and branches of the plantoid robot are populated by soft, folding leaves that gently move toward light and humidity. Plantoid leaves cannot yet transform light into energy, but Michael Graetzel, a chemistry professor at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, and one of the world’s most cited scientists, has developed transparent and foldable films filled with synthetic chlorophyll capable of converting and storing electricity from light that one day could be formed into artificial leaves powering plantoid robots. “The fact that the root only applies pressure to the soil from the tip is what makes it fundamentally different from traditional drills, which are very destructive. Roots, on the contrary, look for existing soil fractures to grow into, and only if they find none, they apply just enough pressure to create a fracture themselves,” Mazzolai explains.

This new project may one day result in robot explorators that can work in dark environments with a lot of empty space, such as caves or wells.

The plantoid project has attracted a lot of attention in the robotics community because of the intriguing challenges that it combines — growth, shape shifting, collective intelligence — and because of possible new applications. Environmental monitoring is the most obvious one: The robotic roots could measure changing concentrations of chemicals in the soil, especially toxic ones, or they could prospect for water in arid soils, as well as for oil and gas — even though, by the time this technology is mature, we’d better have lost our dependence on them as energy sources on planet Earth. They could also inspire new medical devices, such as safer endoscopes that move in the body without damaging tissue. But space applications remain on Mazzolai’s radar.

Meanwhile, Mazzolai has started another plant-inspired project, called Growbot. This time the focus is on what happens over the ground, and the inspiration comes from climbing trees. “The invasiveness of climbing plants shows how successful they are from an evolutionary point of view,” she notes. “Instead of building a solid trunk, they use the extra energy for growing and moving faster than other plants. They are very efficient at using clues from the environment to find a place to anchor. They use light, chemical signals, tactile perception. They can sense if their anchoring in the soil is strong enough to support the part of the plant that is above the ground.” Here the idea is to build another growing robot, similar to the plantoid roots, that can overcome void spaces and attach to existing structures. “Whereas plantoids must face friction, grow-bots work against gravity,” she notes. This new project may one day result in robot explorators that can work in dark environments with a lot of empty space, such as caves or wells.

But for all her robots, Mazzolai is still keeping an eye on the visionary idea that started it all: planting and letting them grow on other planets. “It was too early when we first proposed it; we barely knew how to study the problem. Now I hope to start working with space agencies again.” Plant-inspired robots, she says, could not only sample the soil but also release chemicals to make it more fertile — whether on Earth or a terraformed Mars. And in addition to anchoring, she envisions a future where roboplants could be used to grow entire infrastructure from scratch. “As they grow, the roots of plantoids and the branches of a growbot would build a hollow structure that can be filled with cables or liquids,” she explains. This ability to autonomously grow the infrastructure for a functioning site would make a difference when colonizing hostile environments such as Mars, where a forest of plant-inspired robots could analyze the soil and search for water and other chemicals, creating a stable structure complete with water pipes, electrical wiring, and communication cables: the kind of structure astronauts would like to find after a year-long trip to Mars.

Dario Floreano is Director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He is the co-author, with Nicola Nosengo, of “Tales From a Robotic World: How Intelligent Machines Will Shape Our Future,” from which this article is excerpted.

Nicola Nosengo is a science writer and science communicator at EPFL. His work has appeared in Nature, the Economist, Wired, and other publications. He is the Chief Editor of Nature Italy

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[Related: We finally have a detailed map of water on the moon.]

May 4 and 5- Full Flower Moon

The Full Flower moon reaches peak illumination at 1:36 p.m. EDT on Friday, May 5. The moon will be  below the horizon and in daylight at this time, so the best bet is to take a look on the nights of May 4 and 5. The name Flower Moon is in reference to May’s blooms when flowers are typically most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere. 

May’s full moon is also called the Budding Moon or Zaagibagaa-giizis in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe, the Summer Moon or Upinagaaq in Inupiat, and the Dancing Moon or Tahch’ahipu in Tunica, the language of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana.

May 5 and 6- Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

Following April’s total solar eclipse, May will see a penumbral lunar eclipse. Here, the moon will pass deep into the counterpart of planet Earth’s shadow, known as a penumbra. It will be the deepest penumbral eclipse until September 2042. This kind of eclipse is very subtle and those in the regions that can see it will most likely notice that the moon appears a little bit darker, as long as the night skies are clear. 

People living in Asia, Australia, Europe, and Africa will have the best chance of seeing this event.  

[Related: Hubble just captured a lunar eclipse for the first time ever.]

May 5 and 6- Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower

We were not kidding when we said that May 5 is a big day for celestial events! The Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower is expected to peak on May 5 and 6, where roughly 10 to 30 meteors per hour can be seen. Eta Aquarid meteors are known to be speed demons, with some traveling at about 148,000 mph into the Earth’s atmosphere. These fast meteors can leave behind little incandescent bits of debris in their wake called trains. 

This meteor shower is usually active between April 19 and May 28 every year, peaking in early May. It’s radiant, or the point in the sky where the meteors appear to come from, is in the direction of the constellation Aquarius and the shower is named for the constellation’s brightest star, Eta Aquarii. It is also one of two meteor showers created by the debris from Comet Halley.

The Eta Aquarids are visible in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres just before dawn, but the Southern Hemisphere has a better chance of seeing more of the Eta Aquarids.

May 27-30- Lāhaina Noon

This twice a year event in the Earth’s tropical region is when the sun is directly overhead around solar noon. At this point, upright objects do not cast shadows. It happens in May and then again in July.

According to the Bishop Museum, in English, the word “lāhainā” can be translated as “cruel sun,” and is a reference to severe droughts experienced in that part of the island of Maui in Hawaii. An older term in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi is “kau ka lā i ka lolo,” which means “the sun rests upon the brain” and references both the physical and cultural significance of the event

May 29- Mercury at Greatest Western Elongation

The planet Mercury will reach its greatest separation from the sun in late May and into June. It may be difficult to see from the United States, but is expected to reach this point in pre-dawn hours beginning on May 29. 

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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On April 19, 2021, a little more than a century after the Wright Brothers’ first test flight on Earth, humans managed to zoom a helicopter around on another planet. The four-pound aircraft, known as Ingenuity, is part of NASA’s Mars2020 exploration program, along with the Perseverance rover.

The dynamic duo made history again this month, as Ingenuity celebrated its landmark 50th flight. The small aircraft was built to fly only five times—as a demonstration of avionics customized for the thin Mars air, not a key part of the science mission—but it has surpassed that goal 10 times over with no signs of slowing down.

[Related: InSight says goodbye with what may be its last wistful image of Mars]

“Ingenuity has changed the way that we think about Mars exploration,” says Håvard Grip, NASA engineer and former chief pilot of Ingenuity. Although the helicopter started as a tech demo, proving that humans could make an aircraft capable of navigating the thin Martian atmosphere, it has become a useful partner to Percy. Ingenuity can zip up to 39 feet into the sky, scout the landscape, and inform the rover’s next moves through the Red Planet’s rocky terrain.

In the past months, Perseverance has been wrapping up its main science mission in Jezero Crater, a dried-up delta that could give astronomers insight on Mars’ possibly watery past and ancient microbial life. Ingenuity has been leap-frogging along with the rover, taking aerial shots of its robotic bestie and getting glimpses into the path ahead. This recon helps scientists determine their priorities for exploration, and helps NASA’s planning team prepare for unexpected hazards and terrain.

Unfortunately, the narrow channels in the delta are causing difficulties for the helicopter’s communications with the rover, forcing them to stay close together for fear of being irreparably separated. Ingenuity also can’t fall behind the rover, because its limited stamina (up to 3-minute-long flights at time) means it might not be able to catch up. Over the past month, the team shepherded the pair through a particularly treacherous stretch of the drive, though, and they’re still going strong—even setting flight speed and frequency records at the same time. Meanwhile, Percy has been investigating some crater walls and funky-colored rocks, of which scientists are trying to figure out the origins.

Ingenuity has certainly proven the value of helicopters in planetary exploration, and each flight adds to the pile of data engineers have at their disposal for planning the next generation of aerial robots. “When we look ahead to potential future missions, helicopters are an inevitable part of the equation,” says Grip.

What exactly comes next for Ingenuity itself, though, is anyone’s guess. “Every sol [Martian day] that Ingenuity survives on Mars is one step further into uncharted territory,” Grip adds. And while the team will certainly feel a loss when the helicopter finally goes out, they’ve already completed their main mission of demonstrating that the avionics can work. All the extra scouting and data collection is a reward for building something so sturdy. 

[Related: Two NASA missions combined forces to analyze a new kind of marsquake]

They’re now continuing to push the craft to its limits, testing out how far they can take this technology. For those at home who want to follow along, the mission actually provides flight previews on Ingenuity’s status updates page. 

“It may all be over tomorrow,” says Grip. “But one thing we’ve learned over the last two years is not to underestimate Ingenuity’s ability to hang on.” 

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Of all the celestial events lighting up the sky this month, the Lyrid meteor shower has the potential to be one of the most spectacular. The annual event began on April 16 and will peak this weekend before wrapping up on April 25. You won’t need any special equipment to catch a glimpse—just your eyes and a clear night sky—but it helps to know when and where to look.

When to watch the meteor shower

In the northern hemisphere, you can look skyward beginning around 10 p.m. local time on Friday, April 21 and Saturday, April 22 into the early morning hours of the 23rd. The predicted peak is for Sunday, April 23 at 9 p.m. Eastern Time (1:06 Universal Time). This year, the Lyrids’ peak is quite narrow, but moonlight will not interfere with the meteor shower like it did in 2021 and 2022.

[Related: How to photograph a meteor shower]

“Serious observers should watch for at least an hour, as numerous peaks and valleys of activity will occur,” the American Meteor Society recommends.  “If you only view for a short time it may coincide with a lull of activity. Watching for at least an hour guarantees you will get to see the best this display has to offer.”

Where to look for the Lyrids

The Lyrids are named after the constellation Lyra, which is the constellation closest to their radiant—where the meteors appear to originate. Look toward a blue-white star named Vega, the brightest glimmer in the constellation. In the northern hemisphere this time of year, Lyra appears almost directly overhead around midnight. In southern latitudes, Lyra appears lower in the northern part of the sky. 

Once you’ve spotted Vega or Lyra, start to look for streaks of light in the night sky. It is best to watch from a location away from city lights and to let your eyes adjust to the darkness for at least 30 minutes beforehand. The International Dark Sky Association has an online tool to help locate designated dark sky parks that protect nocturnal environments.

What you may see… including fireballs

In a dark sky with no moon, you may be able to glimpse 10 to 20 meteors per hour. The Lyrids can have uncommon surges in activity that bring rates up to 100 meteors per hour. The Lyrid meteor shower appears to outburst, or produce an unexpectedly large number of meteors, about every 60 years, with the next outburst expected in 2042. 

During the last half of April in recent years, irregular numbers of very bright meteors have been observed coming from the southern part of the sky during the Lyrids. Sometimes, these fireballs drop as meteorites, and could be the remnants of a broken-up asteroid instead of a comet. An asteroid is a small, rocky object that appears as a point of light in a telescope. Comets are also planetary objects that orbit the sun, but they’re composed of ice and dust that vaporize when they get closer to the sun. This makes comets appear more fuzzy or with a tail in a telescope.

[Related: Scientists finally solve the mystery of why comets glow green.]

This year, a “window of opportunity” for a possible fireball sighting may be between 5 p.m. ET on April 23 and 7 p.m. ET on April 25, according to Space.com.

Most meteor showers are the result of debris from a passing comet, and the Lyrids are no different. The source of these space rocks is Comet Thatcher, which astronomers first noticed in 1861. At that time, the comet was at its most recent perihelion—its closest point to the sun. It will reach its farthest point from the sun close to 2070 and will hit perihelion again around 2283.

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Since 1995 scientists have found more than 5,000 exoplanets—other worlds beyond our solar system. But while space researchers have gotten very good at discovering big planets, smaller ones have evaded detection.

However, a novel astronomy detection technique known as microlensing is starting to fill in the gaps. Experts who are a part of the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) recently used this method to locate three new exoplanets about the same sizes as Jupiter and Saturn. They announced these findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on April 11. 

How does microlensing work?

Most exoplanets have been found through the transit method. This is when scientists use observatories like the Kepler Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope to look at dips in the amount of light coming from a star. 

Meanwhile, gravitational microlensing (usually just called microlensing) involves searching for increases in brightness in deep space. These brilliant flashes are from a planet and its star bending the light of a more distant star, magnifying it according to Einstein’s rules for relativity. You may have heard of gravitational lensing for galaxies, which pretty much relies on the same physics, but on a much bigger scale.

The new discoveries were particularly unique because they were found in partial data, where astronomers only observed half the event.

“Microlensing events are sort of like supernovae in that we only get one chance to observe them,” says Samson Johnson, an astronomer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab who was not affiliated with the study. 

Because astronomers only have one chance and don’t always know when events will happen, they sometimes miss parts of the show. “This is sort of like making a cake with only half of the recipe,” adds Johnson.

[Related: Sorry, Star Trek fans, the real planet Vulcan doesn’t exist]

The three new planets have long serial-number-like strings of letters and numbers for names: KMT-2021-BLG-2010Lb, KMT-2022-BLG-0371Lb, and KMT-2022-BLG-1013Lb. Each of these worlds revolves around a different star. They weigh as much as Jupiter, Saturn, and a little less than Saturn, respectively. 

Even though the researchers only observed part of the microlensing events for each of these planets, they were able to rule out other scenarios that could confidently explain the signals. This work “does show that even with incomplete data, we can learn interesting things about these planets,” says Scott Gaudi, an Ohio State University astronomer who was not involved in the published paper.

The exoplanet search continues

Microlensing is “highly complementary” to other exoplanet-hunting techniques, says Jennifer Yee, a co-author of the new study and researcher at The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. It can scope out planets that current technologies can’t, including worlds as small as Jupiter’s moon Ganymede or even a few times the mass of Earth’s moon, according to Gaudi.

The strength of microlensing is that “it’s a demographics machine, so you can detect lots of planets,” says Gaudi. This ability to detect planets of all sizes is crucial for astronomers as they complete their sweeping exoplanet census to determine the most common type of planet and the uniqueness of our own solar system. 

Astronomers are honing their microlensing skills with new exoplanet discoveries like those from KTMNet, ensuring that they know how to handle this kind of data before new space telescopes come online in the next few years. For example, microlensing will be a large part of the Roman Space Telescope’s planned mission when it launches mid-decade. 

“We’ll increase the number of planets we know by several thousand with Roman, maybe even more,” says Gaudi. “We went from Kepler being the star of the show to TESS [NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite] being the star of the show … For its time period, Roman [and microlensing] will be the star of the show.”

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On Wednesday and Thursday, a particularly strange “hybrid” eclipse is coming to Australia, Indonesia, and some other parts of Southeast Asia, but you don’t have to be there to watch. Don’t miss it—the next one won’t happen for nearly another decade.

How to see the April 20 solar eclipse in person

The exact time of the eclipse will vary depending on your location, so you’ll need to check when it will be visible for you. Timeanddate.com has a particularly handy tool for figuring this out. To use it, click Path Map at the top of the page and see if you’re going to be under any part of the eclipse’s path. If so, zoom in to pinpoint where you are and click on the map to bring up an information box that shows when the event will be visible in local time.

Even if you’re in the partial eclipse zone, it’s worth stepping outside to take a peek at this celestial happening. “We are going to get coffee and freak out about the sky. It’s going to be fun,” says University of Melbourne astronomer Benji Metha about his eclipse plans. The moon will cover only about 10 percent of the sun where he is in southeastern Australia.

[Related: April 2023 stargazing guide]

If you’re in the eclipse’s path, be sure to come prepared. Never look directly at the sun. Eclipse glasses are readily available online, but make sure the ones you’re buying aren’t fake. Too late to buy? You can make your own eclipse projector instead. Unlike almost every other astronomical event, solar eclipses happen in the daytime, so you won’t really be able to spot other stars or deep sky objects at the same time. The sun and moon will be the only ones on stage.

Timeanddate is also hosting an eclipse livestream in collaboration with Perth Observatory in western Australia, where roughly 70 percent of the sun will be covered. Like Exmouth, Perth is 12 hours ahead of New York City, so live video will start at 10 p.m. ET on April 19 and continue until the partial eclipse ends around 12:46 a.m. ET on April 20.

Tune in, and you’ll be joining solar scientists around the world who are particularly interested in this event and the data they can gather from it. “I look forward to this eclipse, because it is a long-anticipated party,” says Berkeley heliophysicist Jia Huang. “A hybrid eclipse is very rare.”

When is the next eclipse?

If you miss the show, there are sure to be some incredible photos posted from the event, and you will be able to watch recordings online afterward. But if you want to see an eclipse in person, a few are coming to the States soon enough.

First, an annular solar eclipse will travel from Oregon to Texas on October 14, 2023, followed several months later by the next North American total solar eclipse from Texas up through Maine on April 8, 2024.

What to know about the four types of solar eclipses

Solar eclipses happen whenever Earth’s moon gets between us and the sun, aligning to block out the sunlight and cause an eerie daytime darkness. Eclipses are predictable, thanks to centuries of observational astronomy across many cultures, and “we can now forecast these events with incredible accuracy,” Metha says. It’s a good thing we know when they’re coming so we’re not surprised. “Imagine how many car accidents a sudden solar eclipse would cause if people were not expecting it,” he adds.

These celestial events come in a few flavors: total, partial, annular, and hybrid. In a total eclipse, the moon fully blocks out the sun. For a partial eclipse, the sun and moon aren’t quite lined up, so only a chunk of the sun is covered. Similarly, for an annular eclipse, some of the sun remains exposed—but this type happens when the moon is at its farthest point from Earth and appears smaller, creating a ring of light when it lines up with the sun. Hybrid eclipses, like the one happening this week, shift between total and annular due to the curvature of Earth.

Solar eclipses trace paths along Earth’s surface, with a path of totality—where you can see a total eclipse—in the center, surrounded by various shades of partial eclipse. The upcoming April 20 eclipse path of totality clips the northwestern corner of Australia and passes through the islands of Timor, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. The entirety of Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and parts of other Southeast Asian countries will experience at least a partial eclipse.

[Related: How worried should we be about solar flares and space weather?]

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It’s time for JUICE to get to work. The European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer blasted off on an Ariane 5 rocket yesterday to begin its eight-year journey to the Jovian system to study Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, three of the largest moons in the entire solar system.

Together with NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will launch in October 2024 but arrive at its destination a year earlier than JUICE, the missions will get the first close-ups of Jupiter’s icy moons since NASA’s Galileo probe visited the gas giant from 1995 and 2003.

“We learned about Europa having a subsurface ocean as a result of the Galileo mission,” says Emily Martin, a research geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air And Space Museum. The Galileo finding ignited interest in so-called  “ocean worlds” that have liquid water under their thick surface ice and might be the best place to look for alien life in our solar system. Ganymede and Callisto are likely ocean worlds too.

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter]

While Galileo captured some images of the lesser-known siblings, it couldn’t analyze their surfaces as well as originally plannedspacecraft was hamstrung from the beginning, when its high-gain antenna, necessary for sending back large amounts of data, failed to fully deploy. Consequently, when JUICE arrives at Jupiter in 2031, it will begin providing the first truly high-resolution studies of Ganymede and Callisto, and add to the data on Europa collected by the Europa Clipper. JUICE will use its laser altimeter to build detailed topographic maps of all three moons and use measurements of their magnetic and gravitational fields, along with radar, to probe their internal structures.

“Galileo did the reconnaissance,” Martin says, “and now JUICE gets to go back and really dig deep.”

Is there water on Jupiter’s moons?

If people know one Jovian moon, it’s likely Europa: The icy moon’s subsurface ocean has been the focus of science fiction books and movies. But Martin is particularly excited about what JUICE might find at Callisto. Jupiter’s second largest moon, it orbits farther out than Europa or Ganymede. It appears to be geologically inactive and may not be differentiated, meaning Callisto’s insides haven’t separated into the crust-mantle-core layers seen in other planets and moons.

Despite the low-key profile, data from the Galileo mission suggests Callisto could contain a liquid ocean like Europa and Ganymede. Understanding just how that could be possible, and getting a look at what Callisto’s interior really looks like, could help space researchers better understand how all of Jupiter’s moons evolved.

“In some ways, Callisto is a proto-Ganymede,” Martin says.

What comes after Mars?

It’s not just Callisto’s interior that is interesting, according to Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science. It’s the only large moon that orbits outside the belts of intense radiation trapped in Jupiter’s colossal magnetic field—radiation that can fry spacecraft electrics and human explorers alike. “If humanity is to build a base on one of the Jupiter moons, Callisto would be by far the first choice,” Sheppard says. “It could be the gateway moon to the outer solar system.”      

JUICE will fly by Europa, then Callisto, and then enter orbit around Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system. With a diameter of around 3,270 miles, it’s larger than the planet Mercury, which comes in at 2,578 miles in diameter.

Geoffrey Collins, a professor of geology, physics and astronomy at Wheaton College, says he’s most excited about the Ganymede leg of the mission. “It will be the first time we’ve orbited a world like this, and I know we will be surprised by what we find.” 

If Ganymede hosts a liquid water ocean beneath its frozen shell how deep its crust is, and whether its suspected subsurface ocean is one vast cistern or consists of liquid layered with an icy or rocky mantle. JUICE will be the first mission to give scientists some real answers about to those questions.

“Even if JUICE just lets us reach a level of understanding of Ganymede like we had for Mars 20 or 30 years ago, it would be a massive leap forward from what we know now,” Collins says. “This will be the kind of thing that rewrites textbooks.”

[Related: A mysterious magma ocean could fuel our solar system’s most volcanic world]

Any clues that JUICE gathers from Ganymede and Callisto could apply to more than just Jupiter and its icy moons. They can tell us more about what to expect when we look further out from our own solar system, according to Martin.

“It contextualizes different kinds of ocean world systems and that has even broader implications to exoplanet systems,” she says. “The more we can understand the differences and the similarities between the ocean world systems that we have here in our solar system, the more prepared we’re going to be for understanding the planetary systems that we’re continuing to discover in other solar systems.”

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Few places in the solar system get hotter than the surface of the sun. But contrary to expectations, the tenuous tendrils of plasma in the outermost layer of its atmosphere—known as the corona—are way more searing than its surface.

“It is very confusing why the solar corona is farther away from the sun’s core, but is so much hotter,” says University of California, Berkeley space sciences researcher Jia Huang. 

The solar surface lingers around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the thin corona can get as hot as 2 million degrees. This conundrum is known as the coronal heating problem, and astronomers have been working on solving it since the mid-1800s.

“Simply speaking, solving this problem could help us understand our sun better,” says Huang. A better understanding of solar physics is also “crucial for predicting space weather to protect humans,” he adds. Plus, the sun is the only star we can send probes to—the others are simply too far away. “Thus, knowing our sun could help understand other stars in the universe.”

A brief history of the coronal heating problem

During the 1869 total solar eclipse—an alignment of the sun, moon, and Earth that blocks out the bulk of the sun’s light—scientists were able to observe the faint corona. Their observations revealed a feature in the corona that they took as evidence of presence of a new element: coronium. Improved theories of quantum mechanics over 60 years later revealed the “new element” to be plain old iron, but heated to a temperature that was higher than the sun’s surface.

[Related: We still don’t really know what’s inside the sun—but that could change very soon]

This new explanation for the puzzling 1869 measurement was the first evidence of the corona’s extreme temperature, and kicked off decades of study to understand just how the plasma got so hot. Another way of phrasing this question is, where is the energy in the corona coming from, and how is it getting there? 

“We know for sure that this problem hasn’t yet been resolved, though we have many theories, and the whole [astronomy] community is still enthusiastically working on it,” says Huang. There are currently two main hypotheses for how energy from the sun heats the corona: the motion of waves and an explosive phenomenon called nanoflares.

Theory 1: Alfvén waves

The surface of the sun roils and bubbles like a pot of boiling water. As the plasma convects—with hotter material rising and cooler material sinking down—it generates the sun’s immense magnetic field. This magnetic field can move and wiggle in a specific kind of wave, known as Alfvén waves, which then push around protons and electrons above the sun’s surface. Alfvén waves are a known phenomenon—plasma physicists have even seen them in experiments on Earth. Astronomers think the charged particles stirred up by the phenomenon might carry energy into the corona, heating it up to shocking temperatures.

Theory 2: Nanoflares

The other possible explanation is a bit more dramatic, and is kind of like the sun snapping a giant rubber-band. As the sun’s plasma tumbles and circulates in its upper layer, it twists the star’s magnetic field lines into knotted, messy shapes. Eventually, the lines can’t take that stress anymore; once they’ve been twisted too far, they snap in an explosive event called magnetic reconnection. This sends charged particles flying around and heats them up, a happening referred to as a nanoflare, carrying energy to the corona. Astronomers have observed a few examples of nanoflares with modern space telescopes and satellites.

The coronal heating mystery continues

As is usually the case with nature, it seems that the sun isn’t simply launching Alfvén waves or creating nanoflares—it’s more than likely doing both. Astronomers just don’t know how often either of these events happen.

[Related: Hold onto your satellites: The sun is about to get a lot stormier]

But they might get some straightforward answers soon. The Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, is on a mission to touch the sun, dipping closer to our star than ever before. It’s currently flying through some outer parts of the corona, providing the first up-close look at the movements of particles that may be responsible for the extreme temperatures. The mission has already passed through the solar atmosphere once, and will keep swinging around for a few more years—providing key information to help scientists settle the coronal heating problem once and for all.

“I would be very confident that we could make big progress in the upcoming decade,” says Huang.

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Update (April 14, 2023): After rescheduling the launch from April 13 to April 14 due to weather conditions, the European Space Agency successfully launched JUICE at 8:14 a.m. EDT and received its first transmission from the spacecraft around 10:30 a.m.

Space enthusiasts will get to have some JUICE for breakfast on Friday morning. The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission (JUICE) on April 14 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 9:14 a.m. local time (8:14 a.m. EDT). Curious viewers can watch the live broadcast beginning at 7:45 a.m. EDT on the ESA’s webpage.

The spacecraft is safe inside its Ariane 5 rocket, the same rocket that launched the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in December 2021. JUICE is Europe’s first-ever mission to the Jupiter system, and the spacecraft should be in our solar system’s largest planet’s orbit by July 2031.

[Related: Astronomers find 12 more moons orbiting Jupiter.]

According to the ESA, If the mission is delayed, the team can try again to launch JUICE once each day for the rest of April. If the spacecraft fails to launch this month, the next available slot is August 2023.

Once JUICE is launched, it will deploy its antennas, solar arrays, and other instruments. The explorer has two monitoring cameras that will capture parts of the solar array deployment following launch, according to the ESA. The 52 feet-long radar antenna will deploy a few days later. 

Over the eight years that it will take to reach Jupiter, the spacecraft will conduct three Earth flybys and one flyby of Venus. The flybys will give JUICE the spacecraft the necessary gravity assists so it can launch itself towards Jupiter, around 559 million miles away from Earth.

After it reaches Jupiter’s orbit in July 2031, JUICE will make detailed observations of Jupiter and three of its biggest moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. In 2034, JUICE is slated to go into orbit around Ganymede and will become the first human spacecraft to enter orbit around another planet’s moon. Ganymede is also the only moon in the solar system that has its own magnetic field. JUICE will study how this field interacts with the even larger magnetic field on Jupiter.

[Related: Dark matter, Jupiter’s moons, and more: What to expect from space exploration in 2023.]

NASA will provide the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) and subsystems and components for two additional JUICE instruments: the Particle Environment Package (PEP) and the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) experiment. 

Studying Jupiter and its moons more closely will help astrobiologists understand how habitable worlds might emerge around gas giant planets, according to NASA. Jupiter’s moons are primary targets for astrobiology research, since moons like Europa are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their icy surfaces. Astrobiologists believe that these oceans could possibly be habitable for life.

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On Earth, we’ve decided that some places are worth saving. Whether it’s the pyramids of Giza or the battlefield lands at Gettsyburg, sites that epitomize our cultural heritage are safeguarded by legal frameworks. 

But human history extends beyond our planet. In 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon and left behind that first footprint. Some view it as comparable to any archeological site on Earth—without the same protections. Undisturbed, the footprint could last for a million years. But a revived interest in the moon means the lunar surface is about to be busier than ever. No law specifically defends the footprint or sites like it from being run over by a lunar rover or astronauts on a joyride. 

“Just in this year alone, we have four or five missions planned,” says Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer and co-founder of the nonprofit For All Moonkind. “Not just from nations, but from private companies.” While some upcoming lunar expeditions will be flybys, others will actually land on the moon. 

In some ways, it’s a race against the clock—and Hanlon is making moves. On March 27, while attending a meeting of the legal subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), she announced the creation of the For All Moonkind Institute on Space Law and Ethics. This new nonprofit organization will go beyond advocating for protecting off-world heritage sites and contemplate the ethics around some activities in space that are not fully covered in existing international law.  

There is some precedent to lunar law. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 governs activities in outer space and sets important boundaries: Anything but peaceful use of the moon is prohibited, and nations are not allowed to claim territory on the satellite or any celestial body.

The Outer Space treaty is also quite vague, according to Christopher Johnson, a space lawyer with the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to space sustainability. You can use resources in space but not appropriate them. In addition, you must give other nations and companies “due regard” and avoid “harmful contamination” of the extraterrestrial environment. 

However, these general principles have never been applied to solving practical problems. “We are realizing that we just have a couple of broad dictums,” Johnson says. “You know, be nice to your neighbor, observe the golden rule, show people a little bit of respect.”

[Related: Say hello to the Commerce Department’s new space traffic-cop program]

Because these rules have not really been tested, Johnson says we can’t be sure people will follow them. The experiment is about to begin: India and Russia plan to launch their unscrewed Chandrayaan 3 and Luna 25 missions to the lunar surface this summer, for instance, while Japanese company iSpace hopes to place a lander on the lunar surface in late April. SpaceX aims to ferry a billionaire customer around the moon in a Starship vehicle by year’s end.

It was with an eye on increasing human activity on and around the moon that Hanlon co-founded For All Moonkind in 2017, an all-volunteer organization dedicated to lobbying for legal protections for areas of cultural heritage on the moon and elsewhere in space. That includes the Apollo program landing sites and the lunar landers left behind by the Soviet Union. These protections could eventually extend to natural wonders like Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars and in the solar system.

Together with For All Moonkind, the Secure World Foundation produced a Lunar Policy Handbook, which they distributed at the United Nations in Vienna during the For All Moonkind Institute announcement at the end of March. Both For All Moonkind and the Secure World Foundation are official observer organizations at COPUOS and are allowed to sit in on meetings. 

The new institute and the handbook represent a modern interest among policymakers, space lawyers, and private companies to create clearer rules of the road for how humans will actually behave on the moon when there are multiple parties present around the same time. These are issues Johnson says policymakers need to be wary of and that they should think through the precedents that could be set by actions that are not necessarily against international law but might not be a good idea.

“This is why we created the Institute on Space Law and Ethics because there are people who want to know what it means to be responsible,” Hanlon says. “The problem is we don’t have a blueprint for that.”

Johnson points to the 2019 crash landing of the Israeli Beresheet lunar lander as an example, where unknown to the other parties of the mission, the nonprofit Arch Mission Foundation had included freeze-dried tardigrades, also known as water bears, in the payload. Tardigrades are hardy and known to be able to survive in the vacuum of space, so their spilling onto the lunar surface could present a form of biological contamination, although some follow-up research suggests the microscopic creatures did not survive the violent impact. 

“Smuggling tardigrades to the moon doesn’t seem to clearly violate any international law that I can point to,” Johnson says. “The ethical component steps in to fill a gap about the law to say, ‘Well, is it a good idea?’” 

[Related: Want to learn about something in space? Crash into it.]

Protecting cultural heritage sites like the Apollo landing sites, on the other hand, could actually be interpreted as violating the probation on claiming territory in space, according to Hanlon. That’s why For All Mankind is involved in discussions around the ethics of lunar activity generally, she says.  The hope is that—if the world’s nations can agree that there’s significant, shared cultural heritage on the moon—the aftereffect could be better relations between major players in the current space race. 

“The ultimate goal is a new treaty, not an amendment to the Outer Space Treaty, that recognizes cultural heritage beyond Earth,” Hanlon explains. “It’s going to be a long time, especially now with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for us to all agree on something here at the UN. But we think it can start with that heritage, that kinship that way.”

Or as US President Lyndon Johnson put it when signing the Outer Space Treaty, we “will meet someday on the surface of the moon as brothers and not as warriors.”

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In a sequel to its image of the planet Neptune’s rings in September 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken a new image of the ice giant Uranus. The new view of the seventh planet from the sun was taken on February 6 and released to the public on April 6. It shows off Uranus’ rings and some of the bright features in its atmosphere.

[Related: Expect NASA to probe Uranus within the next 10 years.]

The image was taken with NIRCam as a short 12-minute exposure and combines data from two filters, one shown in blue and one in orange. Uranus typically displays a blue hue naturally. 

Of the planet’s 13 known rings, 11 are visible in the image. According to NASA, some of these rings are so bright that they appear to merge into a larger ring when close together while observed with JWST. Nine are classed as the main rings of the planet, and two are the fainter dusty rings. These dusty rings have only ever been imaged by the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it flew past the planet in 1986 and with the Keck Observatory’s advanced adaptive optics in the early 2000s. Scientists expect that future images will also reveal the two even more faint outer rings that the Hubble Space Telescope discovered in 2007.

The new image also captured many of Uranus’ 27 known moons. Many of the moons are too small and faint to be seen in this image, but six can be seen in the wide-view. Uranus is categorized as an ice giant due to the chemical make-up of its interior. The majority of Uranus’ mass is believed to be a hot, dense, fluid of water, methane, and ammonia above a small and rocky core.

Among the planets in our solar system, Uranus has a unique rotation. It rotates on its side at a roughly 90-degree angle, which causes extreme seasons. The planet’s poles experience multiple years of constant sunlight, and then an equal number of years in total darkness. It takes the planet 84 years to orbit the sun and its northern pole is currently in its late spring. Uranus’ next northern summer isn’t until 2028. 

[Related: Uranus’s quirks and hidden features have astronomers jazzed about a direct mission.]

Uranus also has a unique polar cap on the right side of the planet. It’s visible as a brightening at the pole facing the sun, and seems to appear when the pole enters direct sunlight during the summer and vanishes in the autumn. JWST’s data is expected to help scientists understand what’s behind this mechanism and has already noticed a subtle brightening at the cap’s center. NASA believes that JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera NIRCam’s sensitivity to longer wavelengths may be why they can see this enhanced Uranus polar feature, since it has not been seen as clearly with other powerful telescopes.

Additionally, a bright cloud lies at the edge of the polar cap and another can be seen on the planet’s left limb. The JWST team believes that these clouds are likely connected to storm activity. 

More imaging and additional studies of the planet are currently in the works by multiple space agencies, after the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identified Uranus science as a priority in its 2023-2033 Planetary Science and Astrobiology decadal survey. This 10 year-long study will likely include a study of Saturn’s moons and sending a probe to Uranus. 

“Sending a flagship to Uranus makes a lot of sense,” because Uranus and Neptune “are fairly unexplored worlds,” Mark Marley, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona and director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, told PopSci last year. Marley also called the future study it “clear-eyed,” and said that learning more about Uranus will help scientists understand both the formation of our solar system and even some exoplanets. 

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After more than 50 years, NASA is going back to the moon. If all goes as planned, the Artemis III mission will see two astronauts stepping foot on the lunar surface sometime in 2025. Subsequent Artemis missions involving the construction of a lunar space station and a permanent base on the lunar south pole could follow every one to two years, funding permitting.

But before the 21st-century moon landing, NASA wants to ensure its astronauts’ ride, the Orion spacecraft, is up to the task. The successful, uncrewed Artemis I put the new Orion space capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s propulsion and navigation systems to the test. The recently announced crew of four astronauts for Artemis II, scheduled for November 2024, will take the next leap by giving Orion a full shakedown of its manual flight and life support systems.

“We’ll be the first humans to fly on the spacecraft,” says Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman. “We need to make sure our vehicle can keep us alive when we go into deep space.”

That makes the Artemis II mission unique, in that its primary focus is not exploration nor science experiments, but technical preparation for the astronauts on subsequent Artemis exploits. “Our focus is on what we can do to enable our co-workers to operate in the lunar environment, whether it’s on the Gateway outpost [a space station NASA plans to build in lunar orbit beginning in 2024] or the lunar surface,” Wiseman says.

To achieve that goal, Wiseman and his crewmates, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, as well as Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will kick off their 10-day flight with a series of highly elliptical orbits around the Earth. These rounds are designed to give them about 24 hours to test out their spacecraft and allow for an easy mission abort path to return home if any problems arise.

“That first 24 hours is really going to be intense. Looking at the crew timeline, you can barely fit everything in,” Wisemans says of all the spacecraft testing his team will conduct. “And then when we get finished with all of that, our reward is translunar injection,” the engine firing maneuver that will set the spacecraft on a course out of Earth’s orbit and toward the moon.

[Related: NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft will get a hand from a Star Trek-inspired comms system]

About 40 minutes after launching from the Kennedy Space Center, the upper stage of the SLS rocket known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) will boost Orion into an ellipse that will carry the crew about 1,800 miles above the Earth at its highest point, and about 115 miles at its lowest.

After initial checks during that roughly 90-minute first orbit, the ICPS will fire again to boost the spacecraft into a much higher ellipse around the planet, this time reaching as high as 46,000 miles above it—far outstripping the 250-mile altitude where the International Space Station usually flies. This second orbit will take nearly 24 hours and is where the crew will do the most serious assessments on Orion’s systems.

“We’re gonna try to test out every manual capability that we have on Orion: manual maneuvering, manual targeting, manual communications set up,” Wiseman says. In effect, they’ll be simulating what it takes to prepare the capsule for a lunar landing—but in the Earth’s orbit, not the moon’s.

A crucial part of the testing will involve what NASA calls a ”proximity operations demonstration.” Orion and the European-built service module, which carries life support, power, and propulsion systems, will detach from the ICPS as the crew practices manual maneuvering to align their spacecraft with the discarded upper stage of the rocket. While they will not actually dock with the ICPS, they will run the systems that future Artemis crews need to dock with a lunar lander or the Lunar Gateway before journeying to the moon’s surface.  

Next, the crew will conduct support and communications checks to ensure the Orion spacecraft is ready to head into deep space. If given the go-ahead by mission control, they will use the Orion spacecraft’s main engines to conduct a translunar injection burn designed to carry the spacecraft on a looping path around the moon, reaching a peak distance of about 230,000 miles from Earth. It will take about four days just to travel to and from the moon.

Artemis II stands out from the other missions in its series in that the Orion main engine will carry out the translunar injection burn, rather than the ICPS, which will have used up its fuel boosting the capsule into the high elliptical orbit around the Earth for testing. And because Artemis II will not involve landing on the moon, the crew doesn’t have to perform an orbital insertion burn, and will instead simply loop around the moon, ultimately passing around the far side of the satellite at about 6,400 miles altitude, relying on Earth’s gravity to pull the spacecraft home without the need for another engine burn.      

The crew will have plenty of other tests during the long lunar tour to keep them occupied, according to Wiseman. While the exact science packages for the mission have yet to be announced, the astronauts’ bodies will serve as mini laboratories over the course of the flight—and after.

[Related: Artemis I’s solar panels harvested a lot more energy than expected]

“As a human explorer, there’s going to be a load of science on us, like radiation and how we handle the deep space environment,” Wiseman says. “We know a lot about humans operating in space on the International Space Station; we don’t know as much about humans operating in deep space.”

The crew leader says he is honored to be commanding Artemis II, even if that means he may not fly on Artemis III or subsequent missions. “Personally, what I really want to do is I want to go fly Artemis II, I want to come back, and I want to help my crewmates train for their missions,” he explains. “Then I want to be the largest voice in the crowd cheering for them when they get assigned to Artemis III or IV.”

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Years after Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan returned from NASA’s last crewed mission to the moon, he still felt the massive weight of the milestone. “I realize that other people look at me differently than I look at myself, for I am one of only 12 human beings to have stood on the moon,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I have come to accept that and the enormous responsibility it carries, but as for finding a suitable encore, nothing has ever come close.”

Cernan, who died in 2017, and his crewmates will soon be joined in their lonely chapter of history by four new astronauts, bringing the grand total of people who’ve flown to the moon to 28. Today, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency announced the crew for Artemis II, the first mission to take humans beyond low-Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. The 10-day mission will take the team on a gravity-assisted trip around the moon and back.

The big reveal occurred at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in front of an audience of NASA partners, politicians, local students, international astronauts, and Apollo alums. NASA Director of Flight Operations Norman Knight, NASA Chief Astronaut Joe Acaba, and Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa White selected the crew. They were joined on stage during the announcement by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry Francois-Philippe Champagne. 

“You are the Artemis generation,” Knight said after revealing the final lineup. “We are the Artemis generation.” These are the four American and Canadian astronauts representing humanity in the next lunar launch.

Christina Koch – Mission Specialist, NASA

Koch has completed three missions to the International Space Station (ISS) and set the record for the longest spaceflight for a female astronaut in 2020. Before that, the Michigan native conducted research at the South Pole and tinkered on instruments at the Goddard Flight Space Center. She will be the only professional engineer on the Artemis II crew. “I know who mission control will be calling when it’s time to fix something on board,” Knight joked during her introduction.

Koch relayed her anticipation of riding NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) on a lunar flyby and back to those watching from home: “It will be a four-day journey [around the moon], testing every aspect of Orion, going to the far side of the moon, and splashing down in the Atlantic. So, am I excited? Absolutely. But one thing I’m excited about is that we’re going to be carrying your excitement, your dreams, and your aspirations on your mission.”

[Related: ‘Phantom’ mannequins will help us understand how cosmic radiation affects female bodies in space]

After the Artemis II mission, Koch will officially be the first woman to travel beyond Earth’s orbit. Koch and her team will circle the moon for 6,400 miles before returning home.

Jeremy Hansen – Mission Specialist, Canada

Hansen’s training experience has brought him to the ocean floor off Key Largo, Florida, the rocky caves of Sardinia, Italy, and the frigid atmosphere above the Arctic Circle. The Canadian fighter pilot led ISS communications from mission control in 2011, but this will mark his first time in space. Hansen is also the only Canadian who’s ever flown on a lunar mission.

“It’s not lost on any of us that the US could go back to the moon by themselves. Canada is grateful for that global mindset and leadership,” he said during the press conference. He also highlighted Canada’s can-do attitude in science and technology: “All of those have added up to this step where a Canadian is going to the moon with an international partnership. Let’s go.”

Victor Glover – Pilot, NASA

Glover is a seasoned pilot both on and off Earth. Hailing from California, he’s steered or ridden more than 40 different types of craft, including the SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule in 2020 during the first commercial space flight ever to the ISS. His outsized leadership presence in his astronaut class was mentioned multiple times during the event. “In the last few years, he has become a mentor to me,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman said.

[Related on PopSci+: Victor J. Glover on the cosmic ‘relay race’ of the new lunar missions]

In his speech, Glover looked into the lofty future of human spaceflight. “Artemis II is more than a mission to the moon and back,” he said. “It’s the next step on the journey that gets humanity to Mars. We have a lot of work to do to get there, and we understand that.” Glover will be the first Black astronaut to travel to the moon.

G. Reid Wiseman – Commander, NASA

Wiseman got a lot done in his single foray into space. During a 2014 ISS expedition, he contributed to upwards of 300 scientific experiments and conducted two lengthy spacewalks. The Maryland native served as NASA’s chief astronaut from 2020 to 2022 and led diplomatic efforts with Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency. 

“This was always you,” Knight said while talking about Wiseman’s decorated military background. “It’s what you were meant to be.”

Flight commanders are largely responsible for safety during space missions. As the first astronauts to travel on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, the Artemis II crew will test the longevity and stability of NASA and SpaceX’s new flight technology as they exit Earth’s atmosphere, slingshot into the moon’s gravitational field, circumnavigate it, and attempt a safe reentry. Wiseman will be in charge of all that with the support of his three fellow astronauts and guidance from mission control.

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This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

It’s evening at the northern tip of the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Aqaba, and Tom Shlesinger readies to take a dive. During the day, the seafloor is full of life and color; at night it looks much more alien. Shlesinger is waiting for a phenomenon that occurs once a year for a plethora of coral species, often several nights after the full moon.

Guided by a flashlight, he spots it: coral releasing a colorful bundle of eggs and sperm, tightly packed together. “You’re looking at it and it starts to flow to the surface,” Shlesinger says. “Then you raise your head, and you turn around, and you realize: All the colonies from the same species are doing it just now.”

Some coral species release bundles of a pinkish- purplish color, others release ones that are yellow, green, white or various other hues. “It’s quite a nice, aesthetic sensation,” says Shlesinger, a marine ecologist at Tel Aviv University and the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, Israel, who has witnessed the show during many years of diving. Corals usually spawn in the evening and night within a tight time window of 10 minutes to half an hour. “The timing is so precise, you can set your clock by the time it happens,” Shlesinger says.

Moon-controlled rhythms in marine critters have been observed for centuries. There is calculated guesswork, for example, that in 1492 Christopher Columbus encountered a kind of glowing marine worm engaged in a lunar-timed mating dance, like the “flame of a small candle alternately raised and lowered.” Diverse animals such as sea mussels, corals, polychaete worms and certain fishes are thought to synchronize their reproductive behavior by the moon. The crucial reason is that such animals — for example, over a hundred coral species at the Great Barrier Reef — release their eggs before fertilization takes place, and synchronization maximizes the probability of an encounter between eggs and sperm.

How does it work? That has long been a mystery, but researchers are getting closer to understanding. They have known for at least 15 years that corals, like many other species, contain light-sensitive proteins called cryptochromes, and have recently reported that in the stony coral, Dipsastraea speciosa, a period of darkness between sunset and moonrise appears key for triggering spawning some days later.

Now, with the help of the marine bristle worm Platynereis dumerilii, researchers have begun to tease out the molecular mechanism by which myriad sea species may pay attention to the cycle of the moon.

The bristle worm originally comes from the Bay of Naples but has been reared in laboratories since the 1950s. It is particularly well-suited for such studies, says Kristin Tessmar-Raible, a chronobiologist at the University of Vienna. During its reproductive season, it spawns for a few days after the full moon: The adult worms rise en masse to the water surface at a dark hour, engage in a nuptial dance and release their gametes. After reproduction, the worms burst and die.

The tools the creatures need for such precision timing — down to days of the month, and then down to hours of the day — are akin to what we’d need to arrange a meeting, says Tessmar-Raible. “We integrate different types of timing systems: a watch, a calendar,” she says. In the worm’s case, the requisite timing systems are a daily — or circadian — clock along with another, circalunar clock for its monthly reckoning.

To explore the worm’s timing, Tessmar-Raible’s group began experiments on genes in the worm that carry instructions for making cryptochromes. The group focused specifically on a cryptochrome in bristle worms called L-Cry. To figure out its involvement in synchronized spawning, they used genetic tricks to inactivate the l-cry gene and observe what happened to the worm’s lunar clock. They also carried out experiments to analyze the L-Cry protein.

Though the story is far from complete, the scientists have evidence that the protein plays a key role in something very important: distinguishing sunlight from moonlight. L-Cry is, in effect, “a natural light interpreter,” Tessmar-Raible and coauthors write in a 2023 overview of rhythms in marine creatures in the Annual Review of Marine Science.

The role is a crucial one, because in order to synchronize and spawn on the same night, the creatures need to be able to stay in step with the patterns of the moon on its roughly 29.5-day cycle — from full moon, when the moonlight is bright and lasts all night long, to the dimmer, shorter-duration illuminations as the moon waxes and wanes.

When L-Cry was absent, the scientists found, the worms didn’t discriminate appropriately. The animals synchronized tightly to artificial lunar cycles of light and dark inside the lab — ones in which the “sunlight” was dimmer than the real sun and the “moonlight” was brighter than the real moon. In other words, worms without L-Cry latched onto unrealistic light cycles. In contrast, the normal worms that still made L-Cry protein were more discerning and did a better job of synchronizing their lunar clocks correctly when the nighttime lighting more closely matched that of the bristle worm’s natural environment.

The researchers accrued other evidence, too, that L-Cry is an important player in lunar timekeeping, helping to discern sunlight from moonlight. They purified the L-Cry protein and found that it consists of two protein strands bound together, with each half holding a light-absorbing structure known as a flavin. The sensitivity of each flavin to light is very different. Because of this, the L-Cry can respond to both strong light akin to sunlight and dim light equivalent to moonlight — light over five orders of magnitude of intensity — but with very different consequences.

After four hours of dim “moonlight” exposure, for example, light-induced chemical reactions in the protein — photoreduction — occurred, reaching a maximum after six hours of continuous “moonlight” exposure. Six hours is significant, the scientists note, because the worm would only encounter six hours’ worth of moonlight at times when the moon was full. This therefore would allow the creature to synchronize with monthly lunar cycles and pick the right night on which to spawn. “I find it very exciting that we could describe a protein that can measure moon phases,” says Eva Wolf, a structural biologist at IMB Mainz and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and a collaborator with Tessmar-Raible on the work.

How does the worm know that it’s sensing moonlight, though, and not sunlight? Under moonlight conditions, only one of the two flavins was photoreduced, the scientists found. In bright light, by contrast, both flavin molecules were photoreduced, and very quickly. Furthermore, these two types of L-Cry ended up in different parts of the worm’s cells: the fully photoreduced protein in the cytoplasm, where it was quickly destroyed, and the partly photoreduced L-Cry proteins in the nucleus.

All in all, the situation is akin to having “a highly sensitive ‘low light sensor’ for moonlight detection with a much less sensitive ‘high light sensor’ for sunlight detection,” the authors conclude in a report published in 2022.

Many puzzles remain, of course. For example, though presumably the two distinct fates of the L-Cry molecules transmit different biological signals inside the worm, researchers don’t yet know what they are. And though the L-Cry protein is key for discriminating sunlight from moonlight, other light-sensing molecules must be involved, the scientists say.

In a separate study, the researchers used cameras in the lab to record the burst of swimming activity (the worm’s “nuptial dance”) that occurs when a worm sets out to spawn, and followed it up with genetic experiments. And they confirmed that another molecule is key for the worm to spawn during the right one- to two-hour window — the dark portion of that night between sunset and moonrise — on the designated spawning nights.

Called r-Opsin, the molecule is extremely sensitive to light, the scientists found — about a hundred times more than the melanopsin found in the average human eye. It modifies the worm’s daily clock by acting as a moonrise sensor, the researchers propose (the moon rises successively later each night). The notion is that combining the signal from the r-Opsin sensor with the information from the L-Cry on what kind of light it is allows the worm to pick just the right time on the spawning night to rise to the surface and release its gametes.

Resident timekeepers

As biologists tease apart the timekeepers needed to synchronize activities in so many marine creatures, the questions bubble up. Where, exactly, do these timekeepers reside? In species in which biological clocks have been well studied — such as Drosophila and mice — that central timekeeper is housed in the brain. In the marine bristleworm, clocks exist in its forebrain and peripheral tissues of its trunk. But other creatures, such as corals and sea anemones, don’t even have brains. “Is there a population of neurons that acts as a central clock, or is it much more diffuse? We don’t really know,” says Ann Tarrant, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who is studying chronobiology of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Scientists are also interested in knowing what roles are played by microbes that might live with marine creatures. Corals like Acropora, for example, often have algae living symbiotically within their cells. “We know that algae like that also have circadian rhythms,” Tarrant says. “So when you have a coral and an alga together, it’s complicated to know how that works.”

Researchers are worried, too, about the fate of spectacular synchronized events like coral spawning in a light-polluted world. If coral clock mechanisms are similar to the bristle worm’s, how would creatures be able to properly detect the natural full moon? In 2021, researchers reported lab studies demonstrating that light pollution can desynchronize spawning in two coral species — Acropora millepora and Acropora digitifera — found in the Indo-Pacific Ocean.

Shlesinger and his colleague Yossi Loya have seen just this in natural populations, in several coral species in the Red Sea. Reporting in 2019, the scientists compared four years’ worth of spawning observations with data from the same site 30 years earlier. Three of the five species they studied showed spawning asynchrony, leading to fewer — or no — instances of new, small corals on the reef.

Along with artificial light, Shlesinger believes there could be other culprits involved, such as endocrine-disrupting chemical pollutants. He’s working to understand that — and to learn why some species remain unaffected.

Based on his underwater observations to date, Shlesinger believes that about 10 of the 50-odd species he has looked at may be asynchronizing in the Red Sea, the northern portion of which is considered a climate-change refuge for corals and has not experienced mass bleaching events. “I suspect,” he says, “that we will hear of more issues like that in other places in the world, and in more species.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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Nothing can really stay a secret forever, and this otherworldly mystery has evaded astronomers for four decades. Saturn’s signature ring system is heating the planet’s upper atmosphere. According to NASA, this phenomenon has never been seen in the solar system, and the unexpected interaction between Saturn and its vast rings could provide a tool for predicting if the planets around other stars have ring systems like Saturn’s.

The findings were published March 30 in the Planetary Science Journal.

The evidence that caused Saturn to spill its secrets is an excess of ultraviolet radiation that is seen as a spectral line of hot hydrogen in Saturn’s atmosphere. This bump in radiation indicates that something is heating and contaminating the planet’s upper atmosphere from the outside. 

[Related: Hubble telescope spies Saturn’s rings in ‘spoke season.’]

According to the paper, the most feasible explanation is that icy ring particles raining down onto Saturn’s atmosphere cause this heating. A few things could be driving this shower of particles, including the impact of micrometeorites, bombardments with particles from solar wind, solar ultraviolet radiation, or electromagnetic forces picking up electrically charged dust. Additionally, Saturn’s gravitational field is pulling particles into the planet while this is all occurring.

In 2017, NASA’s Cassini probe plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere and measured the atmospheric constituents, confirming that many particles are indeed falling in from the rings. This new discovery used that Cassini data in addition to observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, and the retired International Ultraviolet Explorer mission.

“Though the slow disintegration of the rings is well known, its influence on the atomic hydrogen of the planet is a surprise. From the Cassini probe, we already knew about the rings’ influence. However, we knew nothing about the atomic hydrogen content,” astronomer and co-author Lotfi Ben-Jaffel of the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and the Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, said in a statement. 

“Everything is driven by ring particles cascading into the atmosphere at specific latitudes. They modify the upper atmosphere, changing the composition,” said Ben-Jaffel. “And then you also have collisional processes with atmospheric gasses that are probably heating the atmosphere at a specific altitude.”

To come to this conclusion, Ben-Jaffel pulled together archival ultraviolet-light (UV) observations from four different space missions that studied the ringed planet. During these missions spaced out over 40 years, astronomers dismissed the measurements as noise in the detectors. By 2004, when the Cassini mission arrived on Saturn, it also collected UV data on the atmosphere over a period of several years. Some of the additional secret-cracking data came from Hubble and the International Ultraviolet Explorer, an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the United Kingdom’s Science and Engineering Research Council that launched in 1978.

[Related: The origin of Saturn’s slanted rings may link back to a lost, ancient moon.]

The lingering question among decades of data was whether all of it could be illusory or actually reflect a true phenomenon on Saturn.

The key turned out to be Ben-Jaffel’s decision to use measurements taken by the Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). These precision observations of Saturn helped calibrate the archival UV data from all four of the other space missions that have observed Saturn. He compared the STIS UV observations of Saturn to the distribution of light from multiple space missions and instruments.

“When everything was calibrated, we saw clearly that the spectra are consistent across all the missions. This was possible because we have the same reference point, from Hubble, on the rate of transfer of energy from the atmosphere as measured over decades,” said Ben-Jaffel. “It was really a surprise for me. I just plotted the different light distribution data together, and then I realized, wow—it’s the same.”

Forty years of UV data covers multiple solar cycles and helps astronomers study the sun’s seasonal effects on Saturn. Bringing this data together and calibrating it helped Ben-Jaffel find that there was no difference in the level of UV radiation. The UV level of radiation can be followed at “at any time, any position on the planet,” which points to the steady ice rain coming from Saturn’s rings as the best explanation.

Some of the next goals for this research include seeing how it can be applied to planets that orbit other stars. 

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April is officially Global Astronomy Month, a month-long celebration of all things celestial by Astronomers Without Borders, a US-based club that connects global skywatchers. The event features a Global Star Party and Sun Day and online lessons to highlight the conjunction of art and astronomy. April also happens to be an exciting month for space happenings in general. If you happen to get any stellar sky photos, tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

April 5 and 6 – Full Pink Moon

The first full moon of spring in the Northern Hemisphere will reach peak illumination at 12:37 AM EDT on April 6. First glimpses of the full Pink Moon will be on April 5, but because it reaches peak illumination so early in Eastern Time, Western time zones will see it peak on the night of April 5.

April’s full moon also goes by many names. The “pink” references early springtime blooms of the wildflower Phlox subulata found in eastern North America. This month’s moon is also the Paschal Full Moon, which determines when the Christian holiday Easter is celebrated. Easter is always celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, so this year Easter will be on Sunday, April 9.

Every year, the April full moon is also called the Frog Moon or Omakakiiwi-giizis in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe, the It’s Thundering Moon or Wasakayutese in Oneida, and the Planting Moon or Tahch’atapa in Tunica, the language of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana.

April 7 – 34P/PANSTARRS comet at its closest point in flyby

The Jupiter-family comet 364P/PANSTARRS will pass within 11 million miles (0.12 AU) of the Earth in early April. The comet will be in the “foxy” constellation Vulpecula and is expected to have a high brightness magnitude of about 12.3. It will be visible in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, but those in Northern latitudes will be able to see it better. 

[Related: A total solar eclipse bathed Antarctica in darkness.]

April 20 – Total solar eclipse

Eclipses are always an exciting event, but this one comes with a twist. A total solar eclipse occurs during a rare cosmic alignment of the Earth, moon, and sun. The next solar eclipse will be the first of its kind since 2013 and the last until 2031.

On April 20, a new moon will eclipse the sun, but it will falter a bit. Since it is slightly too far away from the Earth in its elliptical orbit to fully cover all of the sun, the moon will actually fail to cause a total solar eclipse for a brief moment. A ring of fire will be visible for a few seconds over the Indian Ocean, but the moonshadow will completely cover the sun and cause a total solar eclipse by the time it reaches Western Australia. Eclipse chasers in the town of Exmouth and on ships in the Indian Ocean will likely experience about one minute of darkness during the day.

A long display of Baily’s beads around the New Moon and a view of the sun’s pink chromosphere could also appear around the moon during totality on eclipse day. While this eclipse won’t really be visible in the US, we’re only a few months away from the 2023 annular solar eclipse, which will reach totality in the western part of the country this October. 

April 21, 22, and 23 – Lyrid meteor shower

The Lyrids are predicted to start late in the evening of April 21 or April 22 and last until dawn on April 23. The predicted peak is 9:06 EDT on April 23. While the peak of the Lyrids is narrow, the new moon falls on April 19, so it will not interfere with skygazing. 

Ten to 15 meteors per hour can be seen in a dark sky with no moon. The Lyrids are even known for some rare surges in activity that can sometimes bring them up to 100 per hour. The meteor shower will be visible from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, but is much more active in the north.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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I’ve always loved learning about the planets and stars, but it sure takes a lot to get me outside on a cold, dark night to see them with my own eyes. This week, though, there’s a celestial lineup I don’t want to miss—and you shouldn’t either!

What’s the big deal here?

Although there have been some wild theories about strange happenings during planetary alignments—like an increase in natural disasters—those have generally been debunked. Instead, the reason a planetary alignment is a big deal is that it’s simply cool to see. “You get to see pretty much the whole solar system in one night,” says Rory Bentley, UCLA astronomer and avid stargazer.

Usually, the planets are spread across the sky, visible at different times of the night (even into the early morning). They’re technically always in some version of a line—all our solar system’s planets appear on the ecliptic, an invisible arc across the sky tracing the plane where everything orbits the sun. If the planets are close enough together, though, they appear to be in an almost straight line. 

[Related: Astronomers just mapped the ‘bubble’ that envelopes our planet]

That’s precisely what’s happening on March 28. The five planets will come within 50 degrees of each other, a tight bunch compared to their usual spread, giving stargazers of all ages an opportunity to meet our planetary neighbors.

How to see the March 28 alignment

The time to spot this planetary parade is right after sunset on the March 28—no more than about 45 minutes after sundown, since Jupiter and Mercury will both disappear below the horizon fairly quickly. You’ll want to make sure you have a clear view of the western horizon, where the sun sets and Jupiter and Mercury will follow close behind. 

Jupiter will be closest to the horizon, easy to spot even in the lingering sunlight of dusk since it’s so bright. Mercury will be nearby—possibly visible to the naked eye, and definitely visible with binoculars. A bit higher up in the sky you’ll find Venus, shining intensely from its ultra-reflective thick clouds. It’s accompanied by Uranus, just a bit above—and for this one, you’ll definitely need those binoculars. Bringing up the tail end of the parade is Mars, up even higher in the sky near the crescent moon. (Bonus: you can see the moon, too, while you’re at it.)

If you’re not completely sure how to tell what’s a planet, know that the planets you see with your naked eye will generally be brighter than everything around them, and if you look really closely they won’t twinkle quite like stars.

You should be able to spot at least three of the parade participants (Jupiter, Venus, and Mars)—possibly even a fourth (Mercury)—with just your eyes if you’ve got good eyesight and/or a clear sky. Grab some binoculars or a telescope, and you can collect all five planets. Venus and Uranus will be visible until they dip below the horizon about three hours after sunset, and Mars stays out past midnight.

Another benefit to using a decently sized pair of binoculars or a telescope is that you’ll get to see a slew of neat planetary features as the alignment glides by. You should be able to spot Saturn’s famous rings, and possibly even some of the colorful cloud bands of Jupiter. Although you won’t notice any surface features on Venus, you will be able to determine what phase it’s in, since Venus has phases (crescent, full, etc.) similar to our moon. Keep in mind that it’s easier to see details when you have clear, still skies, and are looking overhead. The closer your target gets to the horizon, the more of Earth’s atmosphere you end up looking through, making viewing more difficult.

The Pleiades, a star cluster known across many cultures as the seven sisters, also shines between Venus and Mars. You may recognize this particular arrangement of stars from the logo on Subaru automobiles—it’s no coincidence, because Subaru is actually the Japanese name for this cluster. You’ll likely be able to see this one with just your eyes, even in a big city like Los Angeles.

[Related: Why we turn stars into constellations]

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An asteroid roughly the size of a 20-story building—that’s  big enough to wipe out a whole city full of skyscrapers—is expected to fly between the Earth and the moon on March 24th and March 25.

Discovered only a month ago, the asteroid known as 2023 DZ2 will pass within 320,000 miles of the moon on Saturday and then zip by the Indian Ocean at roughly 17,500 miles per hour. It will be closest to Earth on March 25 at about 3:50 PM EDT. 

[Related: DART left an asteroid crime scene. This mission is on deck to investigate it.]

This close encounter—by planetary standards—will give astronomers a chance to study this space rock from a bit over 100,000 miles away. This distance is only half the distance from the Earth to the moon, which means the newly discovered asteroid is visible through binoculars and telescopes in the right locations. Those in the Northern Hemisphere will have the best chance to spot it through telescopes during the evening on March 24.

“There is no chance of this ‘city killer’ striking Earth, but its close approach offers a great opportunity for observations,” the European Space Agency’s planetary defense chief Richard Moissl said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

NASA further confirmed this message of calm on Twitter earlier this week, adding that 2023 DZ2’s close approach will help astronomers to learn more about asteroids. “Astronomers with the International Asteroid Warning Network are using this close approach to learn as much as possible about 2023 DZ2 in a short time period – good practice for #PlanetaryDefense in the future if a potential asteroid threat were ever discovered,” NASA wrote in Tweet.

For a little while, 2023 DZ2 posed a very slight risk of impacting Earth on March 27, 2026. Lucky for Earthlings, it was removed from the Sentry Risk Table as of March 21, 2023.

The Virtual Telescope Project will also provide a live webcast of 2023 DZ2’s close approach.

A group of astronomers at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in Spain discovered the asteroid in late February and have been studying the space rock’s size, orbit, and anticipated trajectory. It’s estimated to be between 140 and 310 feet in diameter. 

A different asteroid that was also discovered in February named 2023 DW possibly carries a larger risk to Earth down the road. The European Space Agency put it on the top of its Risk List and predicts a 1 in 607 chance that it could impact Earth. Estimates say a collision could occur around February 14, 2046, but it could also occur on subsequent Valentine’s Days between the years 2047 and 2051. 

[Related: NASA’s first attempt to smack an asteroid was picture perfect.]

In the meantime, scientists are learning more about asteroids following NASA’s successful DART mission in September, which smashed a car-sized spacecraft into an asteroid named Dimorphos in an attempt to knock it off its orbit. In September 2022, NASA’s planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson told PopSci that DART is a “significant milestone” in humanity’s capabilities to protect the planet from such a dark outcome.

“This is the first time that humankind acquired the knowledge and the technology to start to rearrange things a little bit in the solar system, if you will, and make it a more hospitable place for life,” Johnson said.

The European Space Agency’s Hera will soon follow DART’s trail to study its aftermath in more detail. That mission is scheduled for an October 2024 departure from Cape Canaveral in Florida, on the wings of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Its itinerary as of March 2023 has it arriving at Didymos and its small moonlet Dimorphos and in late 2026 for about six months of sightseeing. If the conditions allow, Hera will try to make a full landing on Didymos.

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Since its discovery in 2017, the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua has been a point of fascination—and sometimes obsession—for astronomy fans. As the first object we’ve seen from another solar system, it’s naturally drawn a lot of interest, with its strange tube-like shape and surprisingly small size. It even accelerated at one point in its orbit, which happens regularly with comets—but ‘Oumuamua didn’t have the usual gassy tail, leading some to even propose it may be an alien ship.

A new hypothesis, published on March 22 in the journal Nature, proposes a different explanation for ‘Oumuamua’s anomalous orbit. Astronomers Jennifer Bergner and Darryl Seligman say the half-mile-long object is just a comet after all, but that its time in interstellar space changed its chemistry. Instead of water causing the extra propulsion, ‘Oumuamua released nearly invisible hydrogen.

“It’s exciting that we can explain the strange behavior of ‘Oumuamua without needing to resort to any exotic physics,” says Bergner, an astrochemist at the University of California, Berkeley and lead author on the new paper.

“Hopefully this discovery will put to rest any outlandish ideas about ‘Oumuamua being an alien probe,” adds University of Washington astrobiologist Kaitlin Rasmussen, author of the upcoming book Life in Seven Numbers: The Drake Equation Revealed.

Comets are chunks of ice and debris left over from the process of planet formation, lurking at the edge of our solar system. On their extremely long and stretched out orbits, they occasionally dive in towards the sun. There, the sun’s bright rays vaporize some of the comet’s ice and dust to make the fuzzy coma and the sweeping tails we see. 

[Related: Scientists finally solve the mystery of why comets glow green]

‘Oumuamua may have begun its life as a typical comet around another star—rich with water ice—before being thrust out into open space by the chaos of a young solar system. (Our solar system likely spewed out similar chunks of detritus in its early days.) On its voyage between the stars, Bergner and Seligman propose that ‘Oumuamua was bombarded with energetic particles known as cosmic rays. These high-energy particles broke the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen in water molecules, creating molecular hydrogen (H₂) trapped in the crystalline structure of the ice.

Once ‘Oumuamua swung by the sun, the heat rearranged the crystals of its ice, releasing the molecular hydrogen to propel the interstellar interloper and cause its observed acceleration, almost like a rocket booster. “It’s more plausible than the other ideas,” says UCLA astronomer David Jewitt, “including those relying on carbon monoxide (which was not detected), nitrogen ice (which is relatively hard to find), and, of course, the spaceship idea.”

“I think the authors have a very interesting hypothesis,” agrees Caltech planetary scientist Qicheng Zhang, who is not affiliated with the research team. The real significance of this result, though, will come with further observations, he adds. 

‘Oumuamua was only invisible for a short time when it passed within 15 million miles of Earth in 2017; now on Pluto’s fringes, it’s far beyond the reach of even our largest telescopes. As an alternative to direct data, Bergner and Seligman suggest studying a similar effect on ‘Oumuamua-sized comets from our own solar system. But there’s one catch—we haven’t spotted any solar system comets that small yet. Astronomers hope the next generation of telescopes, including NASA’s recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, will spot the first of those objects.

[Related: The Milky Way could have dozens of alien civilizations capable of contacting us]

Casey Lisse, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, also suggests that a comet’s H₂ may be observable if it splits apart into two hydrogen atoms under the influence of the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The signal on a ‘Oumuamua look-alike could be picked up by certain satellites like SOHO, NASA’s long-running solar space telescope, “which are known to measure bright comets,” he says.

Astronomers also expect to root out many more interstellar objects in the coming years; they recorded the second one, known as comet 2I/Borisov, in 2019. “There’s approximately one similar object in the inner solar system at any given time,” says Seligman, Cornell astronomer and co-author on the Nature study. “When we get the Rubin Observatory and the NEO [Near-Earth Object] Surveyor going, we’ll be discovering way more.”

Astronomers think of these interstellar objects as a window into other solar systems: the closest peek we’ll get at the building blocks of other planets. “Any object of interstellar origin is incredibly valuable to us because it’s bringing clues about the processes going on beyond our solar system,” says Bergner.

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Water is key for life here on Earth, and it will be key for humans to travel around the solar system as well. It’s a heavy resource to lug aboard a spacecraft, so it’s best to get it from your destination when possible. Thankfully, there’s already some water on the moon—and astronomers just got a better look at where it is exactly.

New observations from the SOFIA airborne observatory (which completed its final flight in September 2022) produced a detailed map of water molecules near the moon’s South Pole. These results, recently accepted to the Planetary Science Journal and presented at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last week, are answering a critical question for both geology and future human exploration: Where can we find water on the moon?

“We don’t really know the basics of where [the water] is, how much, or how it got there,” says Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado not affiliated with the new research.

[Related: Mysterious bright spots fuel debate over whether Mars holds liquid water]

NASA’s 2010 LCROSS mission first sparked interest in the southern end of the moon when its radar revealed frozen water stored in places where the sun’s light can’t reach, like the bottoms of craters. A slew of follow-up observations by India’s Chandrayaan probes added further evidence for lunar water, but there was a catch—what astronomers identified as possible water molecules (H₂O) could have been a different arrangement of hydrogen and oxygen called hydroxyl (OH). SOFIA, however, had the power to search for a wider range of molecular signatures, meaning it could scan for a surefire sign of water instead of something that could be confused for hydroxyl. 

“These observations with SOFIA are important because they definitively map the water molecules on the sunlit surface of the moon,” says NASA Lunar scientist Casey Honniball, co-author on the new study. An accurate map of the icy areas can help planetary scientists distinguish between different ways water moves across the lunar surface, and learn how the life-giving compound got there in the first place. 

“We see more water in shady places, where the surface temperature is colder,” says William T. Reach, director of SOFIA and lead author on the paper. This is similar to how ski slopes facing away from the sun retain more of their snow here on Earth.

Researchers are considering two main scenarios to explain the origins of lunar water: evaporating water from comets that crashed into the moon, or water trapped in volcanic minerals created long ago. The SOFIA data hasn’t helped them to narrow down the source yet. “These are observations, and they don’t come labeled with a nice, tidy explanation,” adds Reach.

Although his team is still figuring out the provenance of the observed water, detecting it at all could be a boon for future human space exploration. A confident claim of water on the south pole of the moon explains “why we are targeting these regions so intently for the next phase of human and robotic lunar exploration,” says UCLA planetary scientist Tyler Horvath, who was not involved in the project.

Unfortunately, SOFIA can’t continue mapping the moon’s water—the modified Boeing 747 and telescope are now retired to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona. “I hope these results help pave the way for another one of these airborne observatories to be developed in the near future,” says Horvath.

[Related: Saying goodbye to SOFIA, NASA’s 747 with a telescope]

Despite the project’s untimely end, SOFIA managed to complete a large number of observations of the moon—among other celestial targets—in its final flights. In fact, it produced so much data that scientists are still sorting through it all. SOFIA’s discoveries “will continue for years to come,” says Honniball, and could prepare teams for future missions, all tackling questions about H₂O. Some prime examples include CalTech’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter launching later this year, NASA’s water-hunting Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER), and of course, the US Artemis program, which aims to land humans on the satellite’s southern regions as early as 2025.

These upcoming projects also promise the tantalizing prospect of delivering lunar soil samples back to Earth, something that hasn’t happened (for Americans, at least) since the Apollo program. “In the lab, even a single grain is like a world of its own revealing stories about the history and evolution of the material on the moon,” says Reach. Actually working with samples of lunar ice in a hands-on experiment could finally determine what form water takes on the moon.

Until then, planetary scientists will keep working through SOFIA’s moon maps, squeezing out every last drop of information they can.

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Even if humans may not arrive on Mars for (at least) a decade or two, when they do get there, they’ll have to procure shelter of some kind. To help towards that end, researchers from the University of Manchester in England have developed a new building material for future visitors to Mars that is twice as strong as traditional concrete and primarily composed of just potato starch, a bit of salt, and Martian dirt. It’s even already got a solid name to boot: StarCrete.

Judging by what is known about the environment on the Red Planet, humans won’t have a whole lot to work with once they get to Mars. That’ll be a bit of a challenge, of course, since space for supplies will be limited on the rides over, so astronauts will need to be extremely resourceful to make things work. Building structures are key to that survival, and while there are a number of high-tech possibilities, one of the most promising and strongest could be comparatively one of the simplest to achieve.

[Related: With Artemis 1 launched, NASA is officially on its way back to the moon.]

As recently detailed in a paper published in the journal Open Engineering, a team at the University of Manchester capitalized on the fact that potato starches are a likely feature of any upcoming Mars excursions’ menus. According to the team’s estimates, a roughly 25 kg (55 pounds) sack of dehydrated potatoes include enough starch for half a metric ton of their StarCrete—enough to compile around 213 bricks for structures. By combining the starch with salt and magnesium chloride taken either from Martian soil or even astronauts’ own tears, StarCrete strength increased dramatically, and could even be baked at normal microwave- or home-oven temperatures.

In their own laboratory tests using simulated Martian regolith—aka dirt—scientists measured a compressive strength of 72 Megapascals (MPa), or roughly twice that of regular concrete’s 32 MPa rating. As an added bonus, creating a similar mixture using mock moon dust showed a compressive strength of over 91 MPa, meaning the StarCrete variant is also a possibility for humans’ upcoming return to the moon.

[Related: NASA’s Curiosity rover captures a moody Martian sunset for the first time.]

Aled Roberts, the project’s lead researcher and a fellow at the university’s Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub, explained StarCrete can step in as alternative options remain far off from practical implementation. “Current building technologies still need many years of development and require considerable energy and additional heavy processing equipment, which all adds cost and complexity to a mission,” Roberts said in a statement, adding, “StarCrete doesn’t need any of this and so it simplifies the mission and makes it cheaper and more feasible.”

Meanwhile, Roberts’ team isn’t waiting for StarCrete’s potential Martian benefits. Their startup, DeakinBio, is looking to see how similar material could be employed here on Earth as a cheap, greener, alternative to existing concrete materials. At least none of the new building options require Roberts’ suggestion from previous research—a mixture that required human urine and blood for solidification.

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On a clear, moonless night, you might be able to see thousands of stars sparkling like jewels above. But a keen eye will notice that they don’t all look alike. Some glow brighter than others, and some display warm red hues.

In the beginning…

All stars form from a cloud of dust and gas when turbulence pushes enough of that material together, pressed into one body by gravity. As that clump collapses in on itself, it starts to spin. The material in the middle heats up, forming a dense core known as a protostar. Gravity draws even more material toward the developing star as it spins, making it bigger and bigger. Some of that stuff may eventually form planets, asteroids, and comets in orbit around the new star.

The stellar body remains in the protostar phase as long as material still collapses inward and the object can grow. This process can take hundreds of thousands of years.

The amount of mass that is gathered during that stellar formation process determines the ultimate trajectory of the star’s life—and what types of stars it will become throughout its existence.

Protostars, baby stars—and failures

As a protostar amasses more and more gas and dust, its spinning core gets hotter and hotter. Once it accumulates enough mass and reaches millions of degrees, nuclear fusion begins in the core. A star is born.

For this to occur, a protostar has to accumulate more than 0.08 times the mass of our sun. Anything less and there won’t be enough gravitational pressure on the protostar to trigger nuclear fusion. 

Those failed stars are called brown dwarfs, and they remain in that state for their lifetime, progressively cooling down without nuclear fusion to help release new energy. Despite their name, brown dwarfs can be orange, red, or black due to their cool temperatures. They tend to be slightly larger than Jupiter, but are much more dense.

Protostars that do acquire enough mass to become a star sometimes go through an interim phase. During a roughly 10 million-year period, these young stars collapse under the pressure of gravity, which heats up their cores and sets off nuclear fusion. 

In this stage, a star can fall into two categories: If it has a mass two times that of our sun, it is considered a T Tauri star. If it has two to eight solar masses, it’s a Herbig Ae/Be star. The most massive stars skip this early stage, because they contract too quickly. 

Once a sufficiently massive star begins to undergo nuclear fusion, a balancing act begins. Gravity still exerts an inward force on the newborn star, but nuclear fusion releases outward energy. For as long as those forces balance each other out, the star exists in its main sequence stage. 

Fueling main sequence stars

Main sequence stars, which can last for millions to billions of years, are the vast majority of stars in the universe—and what we can see unaided on dark, clear nights. These stars burn hydrogen gas as fuel for nuclear fusion. Under the super-hot conditions in the core of a star, colliding hydrogen fuses, generating energy. This process produces the chemical ingredients for a reaction that makes helium. 

Mass dictates what type of star an object will be during the main sequence stage. The more mass a star has, the stronger the force of gravity pushing inward on the core and therefore the hotter the star gets. With more heat, there is faster fusion and that generates more outward pressure against the inward gravitational force. That makes the star appear brighter, bigger, hotter, and bluer.

[Related: The Milky Way’s oldest star is a white-hot pyre of dead planets]

Many main sequence stars are also often referred to as “dwarf” stars. They can range greatly in luminosity, color, and size, from a tenth to 200 times the sun’s mass. The biggest stars are blue stars, and they are particularly hot and bright. In the middle are yellow stars, which includes our sun. Somewhat smaller are orange stars, and the smallest, coolest stars are red stars. 

The hottest stars are O stars, with surface temperatures over 25,000 Kelvin. Then there are B stars (10,000 to 25,000K), A stars (7,500 to 10,000K), F stars (6,000 to 7,500K), G stars (5,000 to 6,000K—our sun, with a surface temperature around 5,800K is one of these), K stars (3,500 to 5,000K), and M stars (less than 3,500K). 

Upsetting the balance to grow a giant star

As a star runs out of fuel, its core contracts and heats up even more. This makes the remaining hydrogen fuse even faster: It produces extra energy, which radiates outward and pushes more forcefully against the inward force of gravity, causing the outer layers of the star to expand.

As those layers spread out, they cool down, and that makes the star appear redder. The result is either a red giant or a red supergiant, depending on if it’s a low mass star (less than 8 solar masses) or a high mass star (greater than 8 solar masses). This phase typically lasts up to around a billion years.

Appearing more orange than red, some red giants are visible to the naked eye, such as Gamma Crucis in the southern constellation Crux (aka the Southern Cross).

The death and afterlife of a low-mass star

Stars die in remarkably different ways, depending on their masses. For a low-mass star, once all the hydrogen is nearly gone, the core contracts even more, getting even hotter. It becomes so scorching that the star can even fuse helium—which, because it’s an element heavier than hydrogen, requires more heat and pressure for nuclear fusion. 

As a red giant burns through its helium, producing carbon and other elements, it becomes unstable and begins to pulsate. Its outer layers are ejected and blow away into the interstellar medium. Eventually, when all of these layers have been shed, all that remains is the small, hot, dense core. That bare remnant is called a white dwarf.

[Related: Wiggly space waves show neutron stars on the edge of becoming black holes]

About the size of Earth, though hundreds of thousands of times more massive, a white dwarf no longer produces new heat of its own. It gradually cools over billions of years, emitting light that appears anywhere from blue white to red. These dense stellar remnants are too dim to see with a naked eye, but some are visible with a telescope in the southern constellation Musca. Van Maanen’s star, in the northern constellation Pisces, is also a white dwarf. 

The explosive stellar death of a high-mass star

Stars with mass eight times that of our sun typically follow a similar pattern, at least in the beginning of this phase. As the star runs low on helium, it contracts and heats up, which allows it to convert the resulting carbon into oxygen. That process repeats itself with the oxygen, converting it to neon, then the neon into silicon, and finally into iron. When no fuel remains for this fusion sequence, and energy is no longer being released outward from those reactions, the inward force of gravity quickly wins. 

Within a second, the outer layers of the star collapse inward. The core collapses and then rebounds, sending a shock wave through the rest of the star: a supernova. 

Life after a supernova for a star takes one of two paths. If the star had between eight and 20 times the sun’s mass during its main sequence stage, it will leave behind a superdense core called a neutron star. Neutron stars are even smaller in diameter than white dwarfs, at about the size of New York City’s length, and contain more mass than our sun.

But for the most massive stars, that remnant core will continue collapsing under the pressure of its own gravity. The result is a black hole, which can be as small as an atom but contain the mass of a supermassive star.

One such example is a star in a binary or multi-star system that accretes mass from a companion. With all that extra mass to burn, it can seem younger than its true age, appearing bluer and brighter. That, Gosnell says, is called a blue straggler star, because it seems to be “straggling behind its expected evolution.” 

Another odd type of star is sub-subgiant, Gosnell says. These stars also are found in binary systems, and are transitioning from the main sequence to the red giant branch, though they stay dimmer. This kind of subgiant star has “really active magnetic fields with lots of star spots on the surface,” she says. “And so you have these really magnetically active, visually dynamic stars as the star spots rotate in and out of view.” 

The ongoing ESA mission, she adds, is reviewing stars with a “much finer-toothed comb”—which may reveal the true variety and complexity of stars that have existed all along. As such missions “peel back the layers,” Gosnell says, “We start to see really interesting stories come out that challenge the edges of these categories.”

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The suit was designed and built by Houston-based company Axiom Space, using some heritage NASA technology, plus a large glass fishbowl helmet and black outer cover with orange and blue highlights. During the livestream, an Axiom engineer walked out on the stage in the redesigned suit and demonstrated the enhanced mobility offered by new joints in the legs, arms, and gloves compared to the Apollo- and Space Shuttle-era suits, twisting, turning, and kneeling down with relative ease. The suits are also designed with modular components in a range of sizes to better fit astronauts of different body shapes and weights.

“We’re developing a spacesuit for a new generation, the Artemis generation, the generation that is going to take us back to the moon and onto Mars,” NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana said at the reveal. “When that first woman steps down on the surface of the moon on Artemis III, she’s going to be wearing an Axiom spacesuit.”

NASA had spent years developing its own next generation of spacesuits through its Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (eXMU) program, but in June 2022, the space agency awarded contracts to both Axiom and Collins Aerospace to develop spacesuits for future missions. Unlike the getups still in use on the International Space Station, NASA will only lease the suits, according to Lara Kearney, manager for NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program.

“Historically, NASA has owned spacesuits,” Kearney said at the event. The spacesuit contract with Axiom is more like the arrangement NASA makes with SpaceX for flying crew and cargo to the space station aboard Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft; the company owns and operates the equipment, and the agency simply pays for services.

Financial arrangements aside, the new spacesuits include an array of improvements and advancements, many derived from NASA research and others unique to Axiom. The suit consists of an inner bladder layer that holds pressurized air in, covered by a restraint layer that holds the shape of the bladder layer, according to Axiom deputy program manager for Extravehicular Activity, Russel Ralston. An outer flight insulation layer provides “cut resistance, puncture resistance, thermal insulation, and a variety of other other other features,” he explained at the event, and consists of multiple layers of material, including aluminized mylar.

The more mobile joints, which will allow astronauts to better handle tools and maneuver around the rocky, heavily shadowed lunar South Pole, were developed at Axiom, Ralston said. Other features, such as the rigid upper torso of the suit—useful for attaching the life support system and tools—and a visor placed further back on the helmet to allow for more visibility, were initially conceived by NASA.

The design also features an entirely new cooling system compared to older suits, will carry a high-definition camera mounted on the helmet, and allows astronauts to enter and exit the suit through a hatch on the back rather than coming as separate lower and upper body segments, as with the current spacesuits.

Importantly, given NASA’s commitment to seeing a female astronaut lead the way back to the moon, the new suits are designed to fit a wide range of body sizes for across sexes, according to Ralston. “We have different sizes of elements that we can swap out—a medium, large and small if you will—for different components,” he said at the press conference. “Then within each of those sizes, we also have an adjustability to where we can really tailor the suit to someone: the length of their leg or the length of their arm.”

Axiom is continuing to build on the spacesuit ahead of the Artemis III mission, including an outer insulation layer that will include pockets and other attachments for tools, and which will be made in white to reflect the harsh sunlight on the moon. The the black, orange and blue cover seen today is just a temporary protective cover to prevent damage to the suit’s inner layers while testing, and, per an Axiom press release, hides “proprietary design” elements.

Despite all the technological advances compared to the Apollo spacesuits of the 1960s and ‘70s, some core technologies are immune to improvement. Asked about whether Axiom found a better way for astronauts to use the restroom while wearing the new shells for up to eight hours on the lunar surface, Ralson didn’t sugarcoat it.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Camilla Rathsach walked along the lichen-covered sand, heading out from the lone village on Denmark’s remote Anholt island—a spot of land just a few kilometers wide in the middle of the Kattegat Strait, which separates the Danish mainland from Sweden. As Anholt Town’s 45 streetlights receded into the distance, moonlit shadows reached out to embrace the dunes. Rathsach looked up, admiring the Milky Way stretching across the sky. Thousands of stars shone down. “It’s just amazing,” she says. “Your senses heighten and you hear the water and feel the fresh air.”

This dark-sky moment was one of many Rathsach experienced while visiting the island in 2020 for work on her master’s thesis on balancing the need for outdoor lighting and darkness. Having grown up in urban areas, Rathsach wasn’t used to how bright moonlit nights could be. And after speaking with the island’s residents, who value the dark sky deeply and navigate with little outdoor light, she realized that artificial lighting could be turned down at night depending on the moon’s phase.

At Aalborg University in Denmark, she worked with her graduate supervisor, Mette Hvass, to present a new outdoor lighting design for Anholt’s church. Rathsach and Hvass picked the church for their project because it is a central meeting place for the community yet it currently has no outdoor lights. They thought lighting would make it easier for people to navigate but wanted to preserve the inviting ambiance of moonlight.

One of the guiding principles of designing sustainable lighting is to start with darkness, and add only the minimum amount of light required. Darkness and natural light sources are important to many species, and artificial light can be downright dangerous.

“Lights can attract and disorient seabirds during their flights between colony and foraging sites at sea,” says Elena Maggi, an ecologist at the University of Pisa in Italy who is not involved in the project. Anholt’s beaches host a variety of breeding seabirds, including gulls and terns, and the island is a stopover for many migrating birds. The waters around the island are also home to seals, cod, herring, and seagrass. Though scientists have made progress in understanding the effects of artificial light at night on a range of species, such as turtles, birds, and even corals, there is still more to learn.

“We still don’t know exactly how artificial light might interact with other disturbances like noise and chemical pollution, or with rising ocean temperatures and acidification due to climate change,” says Maggi.

The scientists’ final design for the church includes path lighting and small spotlights under the window arches, along with facade lighting under the eaves shining downward. To preserve the dark sky, path lighting would turn off on bright moonlit nights, and facade lighting would shut off on semi-bright or bright nights. The window lighting would stay on regardless of the moon’s phase.

The adaptive lighting cooked up by Camilla Rathsach and Mette Hvass would automatically adjust to the availability of moonlight, tweaking this church’s lighting automatically to balance visibility and darkness. Mock-ups show how the church would be lit under no moonlight (first) and a full moon (second). Illustrations courtesy of Camilla Rathsach

“The contrast between the moon’s cold white light reflecting off the church’s walls and the warm orange lights in the windows would create a cozy, inviting experience,” says Rathsach.

The moonlight adaptive lighting design project is part of a growing effort to balance the need for functional lighting in the town and to protect the darkness. Recently, the town’s public streetlights were swapped for dark-sky friendly lamps, says Anne Dixgaard, chairman of Dark Sky Anholt.

Dixgaard also organizes a yearly walk out to Anholt’s beach, where skywatchers can learn about the night sky. “People really value Anholt’s dark sky and want to preserve it,” she says.

Rathsach and Hvass are working on the moonlight adaptive design project in hopes that it will be implemented one day, but they still have some challenges to overcome. Moonlight is a relatively faint light source, so detecting it using sensors is challenging, and lights would need to adjust automatically on nights with intermittent cloud cover. Yet big initiatives often begin with small steps.

“This work is something new and unexpected,” says Maggi. “It’s a very interesting approach to mitigating the negative effects of artificial light at night.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Water is an essential ingredient for life as we know it, but its origins on Earth, or any other planet, have been a long-standing puzzle. Was most of our planet’s water incorporated in the early Earth as it coalesced out of the material orbiting the young sun? Or was water brought to the surface only later by comet and asteroid bombardments? And where did that water come from originally? 

A study published on March 7 in the journal Nature provides new evidence to bolster a theory about the ultimate origins of water—namely, that it predates the sun and solar system, forming slowly over time in vast clouds of gas and dust between stars.

”We now have a clear link in the evolution of water. It actually seems to be directly inherited, all the way back from the cold interstellar medium before a star ever formed,” says John Tobin, an astronomer studying star formation at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and lead author of the paper. The water, unchanged, was incorporated from the protoplanetary disk, a dense, round layer of dust and gas that forms in orbit around newborn stars and from which planets and small space bodies like comets emerge. Tobin says the water gets drawn into comets “relatively unchanged as well.”

Astronomers have proposed different origins story for water in solar systems. In the hot nebular theory, Tobin says, the heat in a protoplanetary disk around a natal star will break down water and other molecules, which form afresh as things start to cool.  

The problem with that theory, according to Tobin, is that when water emerges at relatively warm temperatures in a protoplanetary disk, it won’t look like the water found on comets and asteroids. We know what those molecules look like: Space rocks, such as asteroids and comets act as time capsules, preserving the state of matter in the early solar system. Specifically, water made in the disk wouldn’t have enough deuterium—the hydrogen isotope that contains one neutron and one proton in its nucleus, rather than a single proton as in typical hydrogen. 

[Related: Meteorites older than the solar system contain key ingredients for life]

An alternative to the hot nebular theory is that water forms at cold temperatures on the surface of dust grains in vast clouds in the interstellar medium. This deep chill changes the dynamics of water formation, so that more deuterium is incorporated in place of typical hydrogen atoms in H₂O molecules, more closely resembling the hydrogen-to-deuterium ratio seen in asteroids and comets.  

“The surface of dust grains is the only place where you can efficiently form large amounts of water with deuterium in it,” Tobin says. “The other routes of forming water with deuterium and gas just don’t work.” 

While this explanation worked in theory, the new paper is the first time scientists have found evidence that water from the interstellar medium can survive the intense heat during the formation of a protoplanetary disk. 

The researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a radio telescope in Chile, to observe the protoplanetary disk around the young star V883 Orionis, about 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Orion. 

Radio telescopes such as this one can detect the signal of water molecules in the gas phase. But dense dust found in  protoplanetary disks very close to young stars often turns water into ice, which sticks to grains in ways telescopes cannot observe. 

But V883 Orionis is not a typical young star—it’s been shining brighter than normal due to material from the protoplanetary disk falling onto the star. This increased intensity warmed ice on dust grains farther out than usual, allowing Tobin and his colleagues to detect the signal of deuterium-enriched water in the disk. 

“That’s why it was unique to be able to observe this particular system, and get a direct confirmation of the water composition,” Tobin explains. ”That signature of that level of deuterium gives you your smoking gun.” This suggests Earth’s oceans and rivers are, at a molecular level, older than the sun itself. 

[Related: Here’s how life on Earth might have formed out of thin air and water]

“We obviously will want to do this for more systems to make sure this wasn’t just that wasn’t just a fluke,” Tobin adds. It’s possible, for instance, that water chemistry is somehow altered later in the development of planets, comets, and asteroids, as they smash together in a protoplanetary disk. 

But as an astronomer studying star formation, Tobin already has some follow up candidates in mind. “There are several other good candidates that are in the Orion star-forming region,” he says. “You just need to find something that has a disk around it.”

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NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped a sunset picture that would make any influencer jealous. The car-sized Martian explorer captured a dazzling sunset on the Red Planet at the start of its new cloud-imaging campaign that began in January.

The image, taken on February 2, shows rays of light illuminating a bank of clouds. These rays are called crepuscular rays, derived from the Latin word for “twilight.” According to NASA, it is the first time that the sun’s rays have been so clearly viewed on Mars. 

[Related: What is a ‘Martian flower’?]

Curiosity’s newest twilight cloud survey is building upon observations published in May 2021 that showed night-shining (aka noctilucent) clouds. Martian clouds are mostly made out of water and ice and hover no more than 37 miles above the ground, but the clouds in this new image appear to be higher where it is especially cold. NASA says that their position suggests that the noctilucent clouds are made of carbon dioxide ice, or dry ice.

The 2021 cloud survey also included some imaging made by Curiosity’s black-and-white navigation cameras, giving astronomers a detailed look at how the structure of clouds on Mars move. This new survey will wrap up in mid-March and relies on the color Mast Camera–or Mastcam– that will help scientists see how cloud particles grow.

Curiosity also captured a set of colorful clouds on January 27. These feather-shaped clouds create a rainbow-esque display called iridescence when the sun illuminates them. 

“Where we see iridescence, it means a cloud’s particle sizes are identical to their neighbors in each part of the cloud,” said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in a statement. “By looking at color transitions, we’re seeing particle size changing across the cloud. That tells us about the way the cloud is evolving and how its particles are changing size over time.”

[Related: Curiosity found a new organic molecule on Mars.]

The iridescent clouds and sun rays were both captured as panoramas stitched together from 28 images sent back to Earth. The images have been processed to emphasize the highlights of the images.

Curiosity is the largest and most capable rover that NASA has ever sent to Mars. It launched on November 26, 2011 and landed on the Red Plant on August 5, 2012. Since then, it has snapped the first ever panoramic image of Mars, explored the planet’s Gale Crater and picked up samples of rock, soil, and air samples for onboard analysis. In 2022, the rover even found carbon that could have come from volcanoes or even past lifeforms.

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With over 144,370,000 square miles of surface terrain, Mars has a lot of places where signs of potential life could hide. Factor in the ultra-valuable time of current and future rovers, and it makes it even more challenging to scour for evidence of potential ancient microbes and organisms in an efficient way. To even the playing field a bit, SETI is turning again to artificial intelligence and machine learning in an effort to calculate the most likely and promising places for rovers—and, perhaps one day, astronauts—to look for clues of life. And as first detailed on Monday in Nature Astronomy, the team’s new AI machine learning modeling is already showing potential to speed up humanity’s search for alien life.

[Related: Want to travel to Mars? Here’s how long the trip could take.]

To build their AI, the interdisciplinary project led by SETI Institute Senior Research Scientist Kim Warren-Rhodes trained a program on datasets drawn from a region called Salar de Pajonales. Located at the border of Chile’s Atacama Desert and Altiplano, Pajonales served as a decent stand-in for Mars, with its high altitude, arid climate, dry salt lakebed, high amounts of ultraviolet light, and sparse, photosynthetic microbial life. The team amassed over 7,765 images and 1,154 samples of the area’s rocks, crystals, and salt domes, then used the information alongside other datasets to teach their program to understand and detect areas featuring small biosignatures. Upon turning the AI/ML program towards a new nearby area, the system managed to locate similar biosignatures nearly 88 percent of the time, versus less than 10 percent for previous random searches. The new method also decreased necessary search areas up to 97 percent.

In a statement, Rhodes explained that, “Our framework allows us to combine the power of statistical ecology with machine learning to discover and predict the patterns and rules by which nature survives and distributes itself in the harshest landscapes on Earth.” They went on to express their hope that other astrobiologists will adapt the approach to mapping other environments, as well as to detect additional biosignatures. “With these models, we can design tailor-made roadmaps and algorithms to guide rovers to places with the highest probability of harboring past or present life—no matter how hidden or rare,” she said.

[Related: Signs of past chemical reactions detected on Mars.]

“While the high-rate of biosignature detection is a central result of this study, no less important is that it successfully integrated datasets at vastly different resolutions from orbit to the ground, and finally tied regional orbital data with microbial habitats,” said another team member, Nathalie A. Cabrol. 
Over time, the team hopes they and other astrobiologist groups can continue to build collaborative datasets that could aid in the search for alien life via onboarding them to future planetary rovers.

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Moon dust is the absolute worst. Not only does electrostatics cause it to cling to virtually everything, but it also has the consistency and feel of finely ground fiberglass. It was a genuine problem for the six Apollo crews who visited the moon’s surface—the silica particles covered their suits, worked their way into engines and electronics, and even ruined a few of their extremely expensive spacesuits. What’s more, many suffered from “lunar hay fever” upon return, leading many to worry that future astronauts on prolonged moon visits could develop symptoms similar to Black Lung Disease, along other issues including “DNA degradation.”

These are all serious issues to consider ahead of NASA’s planned return to the moon’s surface in 2025, but a team of college undergraduates at Washington State University just developed an ingenious solution to pesky moon dust dilemmas—blasting the residue with liquid nitrogen.

[Related: NASA’s Artemis I mission returns successfully.]

According to their findings recently published in the journal Acta Astronautica, the team developed a new spray that takes advantage of the Leidenfrost effect. Named after the its discoverer—the 18th-century German theologian and doctor, Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost—the process occurs when a liquid comes into close contact with a significantly hotter surface, causing it to quickly form a protective layer of vapor that briefly keeps it from evaporating, such as when water forms into droplets and runs across a very hot frying pan.

The same principle works similarly in space. In this case, a liquid nitrogen spray (typically around -320F) comes into contact with a surface’s relatively warmer lunar dust coating, causing the particles to bead and float away on the nitrogen vapors.

To test their concoction, the research team first dressed a Barbie doll wrapped with a material used to make space suits. They then hosed it down with liquid nitrogen in a normal atmospheric condition as well as a vacuum chamber similar to conditions in outer space. Not only did the liquid nitrogen spray perform better in the latter scenario, but it also resulted in minimal damage to the spacesuit material. In past lunar missions, astronauts’ specialized brush for the moon dust task often caused damage after a single use. In comparison, the liquid nitrogen spray took 75 uses before similar issues occurred.

[Related: March skies will bring a lunar illusion and a planetary reunion.]

Going forward, the team hopes to further research the intricacies that make their cleaning process so effective, as well as secure funding to construct testing chambers more closely resembling the lunar surface’s gravity. With any luck, maybe a can of their Moon-be-Gone will be aboard a future Artemis mission, ready to help astronauts avoid one of the lunar surface’s less awe-inspiring traits.

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In high school science class, textbooks often feature a recognizable image of the Earth and all its layers—currently, that’s the crust, outer and inner mantle, and outer and inner core. But a new study published February 21 in Nature Communications might leave all of those graphics a little outdated. Seismologists at the Australian National University analyzed the reverberating waves from powerful earthquakes and found what they believe to be evidence of a distinct innermost inner core.

Each inner division of the Earth plays its own unique role in our lives. We exist on top of the thin, outermost layer called the crust. Although there have been past efforts to dig deep enough to break into the mantle, no one has succeeded yet. The mantle, both outer and inner, are made up of liquid rock, and the convection currents present there are responsible for the jostling and bumping of the crust’s tectonic plates. Finally, there’s the core. The liquid outer layer of the core is responsible for producing Earth’s magnetic field, which is further stabilized by the solid inner section. 

[Related: The Earth’s inner core could be slowing its spin—but don’t panic]

We can’t easily study the inner structure of the Earth, so geologists research the mantle by examining samples of rock from volcanic eruptions that may have come from that far underground. On top of that, they study the seismic waves produced by earthquakes. When an earthquake starts at an epicenter deep underground, the movement creates waves that shake the surface. Those waves can be measured by seismometers all around the globe, and by measuring just how fast the seismic waves are moving, seismologists can figure out a surprising amount about just what the center of the Earth looks like.

That is, when the numbers make sense. For a while, seismologists had noticed that when they measured earthquake waves passing through the very center of the inner core, their models would be less accurate. All waves, seismic or otherwise, travel at different speeds through different materials, but a phenomenon called anisotropy means that waves can also travel at different speeds in different directions. In 2002, researchers proposed the existence of the innermost inner core as a way to explain the anisotropic effects they had found when examining some powerful earthquakes.

Now, more research seems to be supporting that theory. As the number of seismic recording stations has increased in recent years, it’s become easier to triangulate exactly how fast and in what direction a wave is moving. The seismologists at the ANU looked at earthquakes above a magnitude of 6.0 over the last decade to determine the exact path of the seismic waves. Because of the increase in equipment, scientists were able to track the waves as they bounced around the Earth up to five times. And indeed, their findings supported that as the waves passed through the center of the Earth, their path was altered as if there was an innermost inner core. The researchers think the divide comes from a different crystal arrangement of the iron and nickel atoms that make up the core.

Some seismologists aren’t completely convinced by the findings because it’s still not clear that this is a hard boundary rather than a gradual transition. But discovering a new layer of the earth doesn’t happen often, and if the innermost inner core continues to be backed up by evidence, the authors argue it might just give geologists more insight into the geologic structure of the earliest days of the planet. 

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Weather folklore says that in the Northern Hemisphere, March goes “in like a lion, out like a lamb.” Usually, we can expect fierce wintery weather to kick off the third month of the year and calm springlike weather to end it. While it is tough to predict exactly what kind of weather that the transitional and temperamental month of March brings, there are some cosmic events to keep your eye on as the days get a little bit longer. If you happen to get any stellar sky photos, tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: Balloon bots might help uncover Venus’ hazy secrets.]

March 1 and 2 – Venus meets Jupiter

The night sky’s two brightest planets will slide past one another and on the dome of the sky. In North America, Venus and Jupiter’s closest pairing should occur shortly after sunset on Wednesday March 1, where they’ll pass approximately a full moon’s width (half a degree) apart. Throughout the rest of this month, Jupiter will drop in the western sky and will hide near the sun for a bit, and emerge later in the spring as a morning planet. Venus will remain in the western sky for the rest of the spring into the middle of summer. 

March 6 and 7 – Full worm moon

March’s full moon will reach peak illumination at 7:42 AM EST on Tuesday, March 7. Beginning on March 6, the bright moon will begin to rise above the horizon. According to the Farmers Almanac, this year’s worm moon will look especially large to us when it’s near the horizon due to the “Moon illusion.” This is when the moon appears bigger near comparative celestial objects than it does when it’s higher in the sky without any other references. 

The name worm moon has a few different origins. It originally was believed to refer to when earthworms appear as the soil warms during the spring, inviting birds to feed. However, new research from the Farmer’s Almanac found that during the 1760s, Captain Jonathan Carver, a colonial explorer from Massachusetts, visited the Naudowessie (Dakota) and other Native American tribes and wrote “Worm Moon” refers to beetle larvae which start to emerge from the thawing bark of trees and places they hide out during the winter.

March’s full moon is also called the Crow Moon or Aandego-giizis and the Sugar Marking Moon or Ziinsibaakwadooke-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), The Day is Cut in Two Moon or Tewehnislya’ks in Oneida, and the Spring Moon or Upinagasraq in Inupiaq.

[Related: Landing on the moon only made us love it more.]

March 20 – Vernal equinox

The March or Vernal equinox marks the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The equinox will arrive on March 20 at 5:24 pm EST. 

The equinox brings seasonal effects all over the globe and occurs twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall). The March equinox brings earlier sunrises, later sunsets and sprouting plants to the Northern Hemisphere and the opposite effects to the Southern Hemisphere.

At the equinox, both hemispheres are equally receiving the sun’s rays. The word actually comes from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), since night and day were believed to be the same amount of time since Greek astronomer Hipparchus discovered the equinoxes. However, as timekeeping has gotten more precise, we know that they are not equal during the equinox. The fastest sunsets and sunrises—the length of time it takes for the whole sun to fall below the horizon—occur during both equinoxes.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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On Friday, February 17, a part of the sun erupted. A piercingly bright flash of light—a solar flare—shone briefly from the left limb of our star, where it was captured in an ultraviolet image by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

“It wasn’t the largest in history by any means, but it was a significant X flare,” Thomas Berger, a solar physicist and director of the Space Weather Technology, Research, and Education Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. (The “X” refers to the letter grading system of solar flare intensity, which ranges from minor A-class to severe X-class flares. “Solar flares of that magnitude will generally cause some radio-interference on the sunlit side of the Earth for an hour or two,” he says. Ultimately, this one was fairly mild—the most powerful solar flare ever recorded, in 2003, was more than 100 times more powerful by comparison—and did not cause any major problems. 

That said, we’re about to enter a more volatile chapter in the sun’s 11-year cycle of magnetic activity. Solar flares are one of three major forms of solar-eruption activity, along with coronal mass ejections and radiation storms, which are likely to increase in frequency over the next few years, according to Berger.

”We are in the rising phase of Solar Cycle 25, and it is expected that activity is going to increase,” he says. (It’s known as Solar Cycle 25 because scientists first began keeping detailed records of sunspots in 1755, and there have been 25 cycles since that time.) The peak of this period, known as the solar maximum, should occur around 2025. The last solar maximum was in 2014.

[Related: How worried should we be about solar flares and space weather?]

That rise in activity that could majorly impact planned space activities, such as the rapidly growing constellations of low-Earth orbit satellites. And a 2025 solar maximum would coincide with NASA’s Artemis III, which aims to return humans to the surface of the moon—not the safest place to be during a solar radiation storm.

 “It’s going to be a really interesting time if we get an extreme storm in this solar cycle,” Berger says.

What is the solar magnetic cycle?

The sun is a giant sphere of roiling, superheated plasma that is essentially electrically charged gas with monstrously powerful magnetic fields.

For reasons astronomers don’t yet understand, the activity of these magnetic fields increases and decreases over an 11-year cycle. The cycle also includes changes in the dark areas on the star’s surface, otherwise known as sunspots, with more spots appearing as the sun moves toward solar maximum.

“Sunspots are the source of solar magnetic eruptions,” Berger says. “The bigger the sunspot, the bigger the explosion. The more active the sun, the more sunspots, and the bigger the sunspots get.”

The current solar cycle stands out so far in a big way: So far, it’s more active than forecast by groups like the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, with more sunspots showing up on the sun that predicted.    

“We don’t know if it will continue to be more active than the forecast,” Berger says. “It’s fairly early on in the game here and could regress back to that weak forecast any month.”

Will solar eruptions disrupt Earth in 2025?

Solar eruptions occur when the magnetic field lines in a sunspot get twisted and snap, Berger says, causing an explosion with three possible outcomes.

The first is a solar flare, like that seen on February 17, which is primarily a release of photons. The second is a coronal mass ejection, or a large release of plasma into interplanetary space. And the third is a radiation storm fueled by accelerating energy particles like protons, elections, and ions. Coronal mass ejections can also sometimes generate a radiation storm by pushing charged particles in front of them as they speed through space.

Solar flares, if intense enough, can cause radio interference on the sunlit side of the Earth. Coronal mass ejections are the outbursts that really cause issues. The charged plasma can generate a geomagnetic storm when it hits our planet’s magnetosphere, resulting in awe-inspiring auroras at the poles, while also wreaking havoc on both power grid technology and satellite technology, Berger says. A big geomagnetic storm can heat the atmosphere so that it swells, dragging on low-flying satellites and even pulling some from orbit, as was the doomed case of 40 newly launched Starlink satellites on February 4, 2022.

Not every coronal mass ejection will reach Earth, however. Many, like the ejection associated with the February 17 eruption, fly off into space away from our planet. The question is whether any more will be aimed our way as we hurtle toward the solar maximum.

“Recent research is really beginning to confirm that almost every solar cycle has a really, really big eruption,” Berger says, “So it’s really just a matter of what direction in space it’s going.”

How do we plan for the sun’s unruly future?

Really  powerful solar eruptions can lead to geomagnetic storms that damage electronics on the ground, such as the the storm in 1989 that knocked out some power grids. But the risks are higher today than in 1989, if just because there’s a lot more technology, and people, in space on a regular basis. For instance, there were more than 5,700 satellites in orbit at the end of 2022, while there were less than 500 satellites in 1989.

“If we do get an extreme geomagnetic storm now, there’s so much stuff up there that’s going to be moving all over the place,” Berger says. “We are concerned with an elevated risk of collision from the next one.”

[Related: What happens when the sun burns out?]

With NASA planning on heading back to the moon and eventually to Mars, scientists will need to get a lot better at forecasting solar eruptions. Physicists like Berger and researchers at the Space Weather Prediction Center can currently predict solar eruptions, but with what meteorologists would consider fairly lousy accuracy and detail compared to 10-day forecast of sunshine and rain.

“We can tell you when the coronal mass ejection will hit, roughly, plus or minus 10 hours,” Berger explains, “But we don’t have a good way to forecast what is going to happen in the low-Earth orbit environment.” In other words, it’s tough to say how much a geomagnetic storm will affect the operation and trajectory of satellites and regular electrical operations on the ground.

The sticking point for better forecasts is that while NOAA runs an ongoing simulation of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, that model isn’t yet able to assimilate real-time data the way terrestrial weather forecast models can. “That is a research program that will take several years to come to fruition,” Berger says.

In the meantime, the sun will keep climbing toward solar maximum in 2025. But even after that peak, it doesn’t mean satellites and astronauts are out of the woods as far as solar storms are concerned. “Really any time between now and 2028 or 2029, we could potentially get a large eruption beginning to hit the Earth,” Berger says. That probably won’t affect daily life, but NASA and satellite operators will need to keep an eye toward the sun.      

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In our solar system neighborhood, there’s one planetary family that we haven’t met properly: the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. Thanks to Voyager mission flybys, we’ve said hello and we know their faces—but we’ve never stopped over for a visit. Now, planetary scientists have decided to make long-overdue plans to walk over and ring the doorbell for a house tour.

The 2022 Planetary Science Decadal Survey, an influential document for planning future missions run by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, recommended NASA prioritize sending an orbiter and probe to Uranus in the coming decades. Past decrees from this process have launched some of the most exciting projects of the 2020s, including the Mars Sample Return and the upcoming Europa Clipper mission.

With eight planets and countless smaller rocks to explore in our solar system, how could planners possibly settle on a single destination—especially when that decision involves millions, or billions, of dollars and affects hundreds of careers? In a recent commentary for Science, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab planetary scientist Kathleen Mandt argues why Uranus is the right choice—and other researchers seem to agree.

“We’ve sent missions to every other planet, to comets, to asteroids, and to trans-Neptunian objects. We’ve sent missions out of the solar system and to the surface of the sun…. Uranus and Neptune are the enigmas of the solar system,” says Will Saunders, an astronomer at Boston University who studies Uranus’s atmosphere.

Humanity’s last up-close glimpse of Uranus, and its sibling ice giant, Neptune, was back in the 1980s with the Voyager probes. Although Neptune would be nearly equally scientifically interesting—its captured Kuiper Belt Object moon, Triton, is of particular curiosity due to its icy volcanoes and more—the extra billion miles to that planet was the dealbreaker.

“The main reason that we chose Uranus first is because it is easier to get to,” Mandt tells Popular Science. “And we have already waited more than three decades for a mission to these planets. Going to Uranus first means less risk and a mission that can arrive at the planet sooner.”

For a planetary mission, “soon” means within the next few decades—the trip to Uranus takes 10 to 15 years, and engineers still need to design and build the spacecraft. As of now, the plan is to launch by 2032, hopefully reaching Uranus by the mid-2040s. The mission would have two parts: an orbiter, which would circle the planet for at least five years, and a probe to dive into the clouds and collect information about the Uranian atmosphere. 

Some key measurements that astronomers have for Jupiter and Saturn are still missing for Uranus, such as the amount of noble gases and the ratio of different types of nitrogen. The probe will measure these chemical markers because they’re fingerprints of how and when the planet formed. “The formation of the four giant planets and the way they moved to new locations had a major impact on the whole solar system,” says Mandt. This planetary rearrangement “may be how we got water on Earth,” she adds, and that motion launched many of the objects in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud to their current positions.

[Related: Expect NASA to probe Uranus within the next 10 years]

Plus, Uranus is the only planet fully knocked on its side: It’s tilted 98 degrees, which is wild compared to Earth’s 23-degree angle. That causes some quirks in its atmosphere. Planetary scientists are puzzled by the resulting patterns of clouds and wind on Uranus, which they hope to resolve in this mission.

Uranus also has 27 moons, some of which may host oceans below their thick icy surfaces. Subsurface oceans are, of course, one of astrobiologists’ favorite targets for extraterrestrial life, and the satellites of Uranus are no exception. One of the major surprises from Voyager was that Uranus’s five largest moons—Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon—weren’t “cold dead worlds,” as Mandt describes in the article, but were instead geologically active.

“Simply put, I want another picture of Miranda before I die,” says Adeene Denton, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “Miranda is, to me, one of the coolest and most unusual places in the solar system, covered in geologic terrains we haven’t seen anywhere else.”

The lessons from Uranus aren’t bound to our solar system, either. In the past few decades, exoplanet astronomers have found that Uranus-sized worlds may be the most common type of planet out there. An up-close study of our local example will be invaluable for astronomers trying to understand distant exoplanets—particularly helpful will be determining properties of Uranus’s core and internal structure, such as whether it’s made of rock or ice.

[Related: Uranus blasted a gas bubble 22,000 times bigger than Earth]

“We have not seen Uranus up close since before I was born. That was before we knew about the existence of exoplanets,” says University of Bristol astronomer Hannah Wakeford. “This mission to Uranus is going to change our understanding of our solar system, and planets across our galaxy.”

The upcoming Uranus orbiter and probe mission has the potential to be a revolutionary event in science, bringing our understanding of the ice giants up to par—doing what Cassini did for Saturn and Juno for Jupiter. “An orbiter is really what we need to do profound science that characterizes the entirety of the Uranian system,” says Denton. “There is so much to see and do, and committing to an orbiter is really truly worth it.” 

Plus, it will return incredible images of the edges of our solar system, certain to excite and inspire future scientists and space fans. Whenever NASA comes knocking, it always packs cameras, and this meet-and-greet is no exception.

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Despite what Star Trek’s warp-speed journeys would have us believe, interplanetary travel is quite the hike. Take getting to Mars. Probes sent to the Red Planet by NASA and other space agencies spend about seven months in space before they arrive at their destination. A trip for humans would probably be longer—likely on the timescale of a few years. 

There are a lot of things that a human crew needs to survive that robots don’t, such as food, water, oxygen, and enough supplies for a return—the weight of which can slow down a spacecraft. With current technology, NASA calculations estimate a crewed mission to Mars and back, plus time on the surface, could take somewhere between two and three years. “Three years we know for sure is feasible,” says Michelle Rucker, who leads NASA’s Mars Architecture Team in the agency’s ​​Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

But NASA aims to shorten that timeline, in part because it would make a Mars mission safer for humans—we still don’t know how well the human body can withstand the environment of space for an extended period. (The record for most consecutive days in space is 437.) The agency is investing in projects to develop new propulsion technologies that might enable more expeditious space travel. 

A crooked path to Mars

In a science-fictional world, a spacecraft would blast off Earth and head directly to Mars. That trajectory would certainly make for a speedier trip. But real space travel is a lot more complicated than going from point A to point B.

“If you had all the thrust you want, you could ignore the fact that there happens to be gravity in our universe and just plow all the way through the solar system,” says Mason Peck, a professor of astronautics at Cornell University who served as NASA’s chief technologist from 2011 to 2013. “But that’s not a scenario that’s possible right now.”

Such a direct trajectory has several challenges. As a spacecraft lifts off Earth, it needs to escape the planet’s gravitational pull, which requires quite a bit of thrust. Then, in space, the force of gravity from Earth, Mars, and the sun pulls the spacecraft in different directions. When it is far enough away, it will settle into orbit around the sun. Bucking that gravity requires fuel-intensive maneuvers.

[Related: Signs of past chemical reactions detected on Mars]

The second challenge is that the planets do not stay in a fixed place. They orbit the sun, each at its own rate: Mars will not be at the same distance from Earth when the spacecraft launches as the Red Planet will be, say, seven months later. 

As such, the most fuel-efficient route to Mars follows an elliptical orbit around the sun, Peck says. Just one-way, that route covers hundreds of millions of miles and takes over half a year, at best. 

But designing a crewed mission to the Red Planet isn’t just about figuring out how fast a spacecraft can get there and back. It’s about “balance,” says Patrick Chai, in-space propulsion lead for NASA’s Mars Architecture Team. “There are a whole bunch of decisions we have to make in terms of how we optimize for certain things. Where do we trade performance for time?” Chai says. “If you just look at one single metric, you can end up making decisions that are really great for that particular metric, but can be problematic in other areas.”

One major trade-off for speed has to do with how much stuff is on board. With current technology, every maneuver to shorten the trip to Mars requires more fuel. 

If you drive a car, you know that in order to accelerate the vehicle, you step on the gas. The same is true in a spacecraft, except that braking and turning also use fuel. To slow down, for instance, a spacecraft fires its thrusters in the opposite direction to its forward motion.

But there are no gas stations in space. More fuel means more mass on board. And more mass requires more fuel to propel that extra mass through the air… and so on. Trimming a round-trip mission down to two years is when this trade-off starts to become exponentially less efficient, Rucker says. At least, that’s with current technology.

New tech to speed up the trip

NASA would like to be able to significantly reduce that timeline. In 2018, the space agency requested proposals for technological systems that could enable small, uncrewed missions to fly from Earth to Mars in 45 days or less. 

At the time, the proposals didn’t gain much traction. But the challenge inspired engineers to design innovative propulsion systems that don’t yet exist. And now, NASA has begun to fund the development of leading contenders. In particular, the space agency has its eye on nuclear propulsion.

Spacecraft currently rely largely on chemical propulsion. “You basically take an oxidizer and a fuel, combine them, and they combust, and that generates heat. You accelerate that heated product through a nozzle to generate thrust,” explains NASA’s Chai. 

Engineers have known for decades that a nuclear-based system could generate more thrust using a significantly smaller amount of fuel than a chemical rocket. They just haven’t built one yet—though that might be about to change.

One of NASA’s nuclear investment projects aims to integrate a nuclear thermal engine into an experimental spacecraft. The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, program, is a collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and aims to demonstrate the resulting technology as soon as 2027 .

[Related: Microbes could help us make rocket fuel on Mars]

The speediest trip to Mars might come from another project, however. This concept, the brainchild of researchers at the University of Florida and supported by a NASA grant, seeks to achieve what Chai calls the “holy grail” of nuclear propulsion: a combination system that pairs nuclear thermal propulsion with an electric kind. 

“We did some preliminary analysis, and it seems like we can get pretty close to [45 days],” says the leader of that project, Ryan Gosse, a professor of practice in the University of Florida’s in-house applied research program, Florida Applied Research in Engineering (FLARE). One caveat: That timeline is for a light payload and no humans on board. However, if the project is successful, the technology could potentially be scaled up in the future to support a crewed mission.

There are two types of nuclear propulsion, and both have their merits. Nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses heat, can generate a lot of thrust quickly from a small amount of fuel. Nuclear electric propulsion, which uses charged particles, is even more fuel-efficient but generates thrust much more slowly.

“While you’re in deep space, the electric propulsion is really great because you have all the time in the world to thrust. The efficiency, the miles per gallon, is far, far superior than the high-thrust,” Chai says. “But when you’re around planets, you want that oomph to get you out of the gravity well.”

The challenge, however, is that both technologies currently require different types of nuclear reactors, says Gosse. And that means two separate systems, which reduces the efficiency of having a nuclear propulsion system. So Gosse and his team are working to develop technology that can use the one system to generate both types of propulsion.

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Well, there’s a reasonable explanation. Heat travels through the cosmos as radiation, an infrared wave of energy that migrates from hotter objects to cooler ones. The radiation waves excite molecules they come in contact with, causing them to heat up. This is how heat travels from the sun to Earth, but the catch is that radiation only heats molecules and matter that are directly in its path. Everything else stays chilly. Take Mercury: the nighttime temperature of the planet can be 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the radiation-exposed day-side, according to NASA.

Compare that to Earth, where the air around you stays warm even if you’re in the shade—and even, in some seasons, in the dark of night. That’s because heat travels throughout our beautiful blue planet by three methods instead of just one: conduction, convection, and radiation. When the sun’s radiation hits and warms up molecules in our atmosphere, they pass that extra energy to the molecules around them. Those molecules then bump into and heat up their own neighbors. This heat transfer from molecule to molecule is called conduction, and it’s a chain reaction that warms areas outside of the sun’s path.

[Related: What happens to your body when you die in space?]

Space, however, is a vacuum—meaning it’s basically empty. Gas molecules in space are too few and far apart to regularly collide with one another. So even when the sun heats them with infrared waves, transferring that heat via conduction isn’t possible. Similarly, convection—a form of heat transfer that happens in the presence of gravity—is important in dispersing warmth across the Earth, but doesn’t happen in zero-g space.

These are things Elisabeth Abel, a thermal engineer on NASA’s DART project, thinks about as she prepares vehicles and devices for long-term voyages through space. This is especially true when she was working on the Parker Solar Probe, she says.

“The job of that heat shield,” Abel says, is to make sure “none of the solar radiation [will] touch anything on the spacecraft.” So, while the heat shield is experiencing the extreme heat (around 250 degrees F) of our host star, the spacecraft itself is much colder—around -238 degrees F, she says.

[Related: How worried should we be about solar flares and space weather?]

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Happy “spoke” season, Saturnians! NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured new images of the spoke season during the planet’s equinox, when mysterious smudgy spokes appear around Saturn’s famed rings. Scientists still don’t have a full understanding of what causes these spokes and their seasonal variations. 

Saturn is tilted on its axis and has four seasons just like Earth. Since Saturn has a larger orbit around the sun, each season on Saturn lasts about seven Earth years. During this cycle, an equinox occurs when Saturn’s rings are tilted edge-on to the sun, and as Saturn approaches its summer and winter solstices, these spokes disappear. 

[Related: The origin of Saturn’s slanted rings may link back to a lost, ancient moon.]

The autumnal equinox for Saturn’s northern hemisphere is on May 6, 2025 and it gets closer, the spokes are expected to become more prominent and observable.

Astronomers believe that the spokes are caused by Saturn’s variable magnetic field. When a planet’s magnetic field interacts with solar wind, it creates an electrically charged environment. 

Scientists believe that the smallest, dust-sized icy ring particles can also become charged, and temporarily levitate those particles above the larger icy particles and boulders in the rings.

NASA’s Voyager mission first observed the ring spokes during the early 1980s. Depending on how much is illuminated and the viewing angle, the strange features can appear dark or light.

To learn more about Saturn and the other gas giants of our solar system (Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune), Hubble’s Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) is a project, is taking long time baseline observations of the outer planets to better understand their evolution and atmospheric dynamics. The measurements will be taken throughout the remainder of Hubble’s operation,  which could be into the 2030s.

“Thanks to Hubble’s OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the outer solar system planets, we will have longer dedicated time to study Saturn’s spokes this season than ever before,” said NASA senior planetary scientist Amy Simon, head of the Hubble OPAL program, in a statement.

Saturn’s last equinox occurred in 2009 and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was orbiting it for close-up reconnaissance. Hubble is now continuing the work of monitoring Saturn and other outer planets for long-term now that Cassini and Voyager have wrapped up their missions.

[Related: Is something burping methane on Saturn’s ocean moon?]

“Despite years of excellent observations by the Cassini mission, the precise beginning and duration of the spoke season is still unpredictable, rather like predicting the first storm during hurricane season,” said Simon.

While other planets have ring systems, Saturn’s are the most prominent which makes them a good laboratory for studying spokes. “It’s a fascinating magic trick of nature we only see on Saturn – for now at least,” Simon said.

Next, Hubble’s OPAL program will add visual and spectroscopic data to Cassini’s archived observations. Putting these pieces together could paint a more complete picture of the spoke phenomenon and what it can tell us about the physics of planetary rings. 

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Scientists have discovered a ring system around a small object beyond the orbit of Neptune, a surprising discovery in itself. But the observation comes with a mystery to boot: How is this ring system possible when, by all accounts, it shouldn’t exist?

The ring in question orbits Quaoar, a small dwarf planet that lies more than 4 billion miles from the sun—roughly 44 times the distance between Earth and our star. Detecting a dense ring around such a small, distant object was no easy feat, but what really stunned the international group of researchers who made the discovery was this: The ring appears to orbit Quaoar too far away. At that distance, the dwarf planet’s gravity should be too weak to tug on the individual particles in the ring to keep them from forming into a moon or moons. 

“This ring is not where we would expect it to be,” Bruno Morgado, an astronomer at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the lead author of a new paper published in the journal Nature, tells Popular Science in an email. “This may change what we know about how rings were formed.”

As University of Idaho physicist Matthew Hedman put it in a commentary published in the same edition of Nature, this places Quaoar’s ring system “at odds with our current understanding of how such rings are maintained.”

[Related: This weird dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system has a new origin story]

Rings are made of chunks of dust, ice, and other materials, orbiting in a disk around a planetary body. For many years, the large, beautiful rings of Saturn, first observed and characterized in the 1600s, were the only ones known to astronomers. It wasn’t until Voyager 1 passed by Jupiter in 1979 that it was determined the largest planet in our solar system also possessed a ring system, albeit less striking than Saturn’s. It’s now known that all of the solar system’s gas giants possess ring systems. Rings have also been found among a few distant bodies, such as Humea, which like Quaoar—and Eris and Pluto, for that matter—are considered trans-Neptunian objects. 

All of these ring systems but Quaoar’s have one thing in common—the rings orbit within what is known as the Roche limit of their planetary body. This is the distance beyond which the gravitational pull of the planetary body can no longer keep the ring material from forming into larger chunks, which would eventually coalesce into a moon. Inside the limit, the varying strength of gravity on ring particles at different altitudes would keep them spread out. 

But Quaoar’s Roche limit is about 1,100 miles from its center. The dense ring orbits at 2,500 miles from the dwarf planet’s center. “This means that the mutual gravitational attraction of chunks of water ice [in the ring] should easily overwhelm the variations in Quaoar’s gravitational pull,” Hedman writes. “We therefore need some other explanation for why this material hasn’t aggregated into a moon.”

Morgado and his colleagues consider several explanations. One is that the ring material is relatively new, resulting from an impact with a moon orbiting Quaoar, and simply hasn’t had time to re-coalesce. But this is unlikely, they write in the paper, as their computer models suggest this material would condense into a new moon within a matter of decades. 

It’s also possible the ring material itself is bouncier than models predict. If so, each chunk would be more likely to bounce off another than to stick, even without the tug of Quaoar’s gravity to keep them apart. 

[Related: Jupiter formed dinky little rings, and there’s a convincing explanation why]

Another possibility is that the ring system is regularly perturbed by the gravity of some other object, such as Quaoar’s moon, Weywot, or another, yet-to-be-discovered moon. It is, after all, very difficult to study trans-Neptunian objects. This ring discovery was only made possible because the research group brought a wide array of cutting-edge telescopes to bear on Quaoar. That includes the European Space Agency’s ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission, a space telescope that was able to detect Quaoar’s ring by watching for changes in the intensity of background starlight as it monitored the dwarf planet. 

“Now we need to keep observing Quaoar, to better determine this ring, and also see if (and how) it changes with time,” Morgado says. “Also more dynamical studies and simulations need to be done to see under which circumstances a ring is stable so far outside the Roche limit.”

The results of further study could force astronomers to change their understanding of the Roche limit. It’s also possible Quaoar is an exception to the rule—but one that enables a deeper understanding of the orbital dynamics of other large structures, Morgado says, “even other objects such as exoplanets, galaxies.” 

Correction (March 2, 2023): The article originally said Quaoar is more 6 trillion miles away from the sun. The correct distance is more than 4 billion miles.

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In one possible future, great maglev lines cross the lunar surface. But these rails don’t carry trains. Instead, like space catapults, these machines accelerate cargo to supersonic speeds and fling it into the sky. The massive catapults have one task: throwing mounds of moondust off-world. Their mission is to halt climate change on Earth, 250,000 miles away.

All that dust will stream into deep space, where it will pass between Earth and the sun—and blot out some of the sun’s rays, cooling off the planet. As far-fetched as the idea is, it’s an idea that received real scientific attention. In a paper published in the journal PLOS Climate on February 8, researchers simulated just how it might go if we tried to pull it off. According to their computer modeling, a cascade of well-placed moondust could shave off a few percent of the sun’s light. 

It’s a spectacular idea, but it isn’t new. Filtering the sunlight that reaches Earth in the hope of cooling off the planet, blunting the blades making the thousand cuts of global warming, is an entire field called solar geoengineering. Designers have proposed similar spaceborne concepts: swarms of mirrors or giant shades, up to thousands of miles across, strategically placed to act as a parasol for our planet. Other researchers have suggested dust, which is appealing because, as a raw material, there’s no effort or expense to engineer it.

“We had read some accounts of previous attempts,” inspiring them to revisit the technique, says Scott Kenyon, an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the study’s authors.

Kenyon and his colleagues don’t usually dream up ways to chill planets. They study a vastly different type of dust: the kind that coalesces around distant, newly forming stars. In the process, the astrophysicists realized that the dust had a shading effect, cooling whatever lay in its shadow. 

[Related: The past 8 years have been the hottest on human record, according to new report]

“So we began to experiment with collections of dust that would shield Earth from sunlight,” says Kenyon. They turned methods that let them simulate distant dust disks to another problem, much closer to home.

Most solar engineering efforts focus on altering Earth’s atmosphere. We could, for instance, spray aerosols into the stratosphere to copy the cooling effects from volcanic eruptions. Altering the air is, predictably, a risky business; putting volcanic matter in the sky could have unwanted side effects such as eroding the ozone layer or seeding acid rain.

“If you could just reduce the amount of incoming sunlight reaching the Earth, that would be a cleaner intervention than adding material to the stratosphere,” says Peter Irvine, a solar geoengineer at University College London, who was not an author of the paper.

Even if you found a way that would leave the skies ship-shape, however, the field is contentious. By its very nature, a solar geoengineering project will impact the entire planet, no matter who controls it. Many observers also believe that promises of a future panacea remove the pressure to curb carbon emissions in the present. 

It’s for such reasons that some climate scientists oppose solar geoengineering at all. In 2021, researchers scrubbed the trial of a solar geoengineering balloon over Sweden after activists and representatives of the Sámi people protested the flight, even though the equipment test wouldn’t have conducted any atmospheric experiments.

But perhaps there’s a future where those obstacles have been cast aside. Perhaps the world hasn’t pushed down emissions quickly enough to avoid a worsening catastrophe; perhaps the world has then come together and decided that such a gigaproject is necessary. In that future, we’d need a lot of dust—about 10 billion kilograms, every year, close to 700 times the amount of mass that humans have ever launched into space, as of this writing. 

That makes the moon attractive: With lower gravity, would-be space launchers require less energy to throw mass off the moon than off Earth. Hypothetical machines like mass drivers—those electromagnetic catapults—could do the job without rocket launches. According to the authors, a few square miles of solar panels would provide all the energy they need.

That moondust isn’t coming back to Earth, nor is it settling into lunar orbit. Instead, it’s streaming toward a Lagrange point, a place in space where two objects’ respective gravitational forces cancel each other out. In particular, this moondust is headed for the sun and Earth’s L1, located in the direction of the sun, about 900,000 miles away from us.

There, all that dust would be in a prime position to absorb sunlight on a path to Earth. The 10 billion kilograms would drop light levels by around 1.8 percent annually, the study estimates—not as dramatic as an eclipse, but equivalent to losing about 6 days’ worth of sunlight per year.

[Related on PopSci+: Not convinced that humans are causing climate change? Here are the facts.]

Although L1’s gravitational balance would capture the dust, enough for it to remain for a few days, it would then drift away. We’d need to keep refilling the dust, as if it were a celestial water supply—part of why we’d need so much of it.

That dust wouldn’t come back to haunt Earth. But L1 hosts satellites like NASA’s SOHO and Wind, which observe the sun or the solar wind of particles streaming away from it. “The engineers placing dust at L1 would have to avoid any satellites to prevent damage,” says Kenyon.

Of course, this is one hypothetical, very distant future. Nobody can launch anything from the moon, let alone millions of tons of moondust, without building the infrastructure first. While market analysts are already tabulating the value of the lunar economy in two decades’ time, building enough mass drivers to perform impressive feats of lunar engineering probably isn’t in the cards.

“If we had a moonbase and were doing all sorts of cool things in space, then we could do this as well—but that’s something for the 22nd century,” says Irvine. Meanwhile, a far more immediate way to blunt climate change is to decarbonize the energy grid and cull fossil fuels, with haste. “Climate change,” Irvine says, “is a 21st century problem.”

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In 2016, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined a plan to send human colonists to Mars. As of today, the human population of Mars stands at zero. (The rover population, meanwhile, has climbed to three.)

Can you do whatever you want in space?

Who’s in charge once there’s a human population on Mars?

Although Musk’s hypothetical colony wouldn’t legally be an American colony, it would still be subject to American laws. That’s because even if the Mars mission launches from Kazakhstan or French Guiana, SpaceX is an American company and the colonists would be traveling on an American ship.

Maritime laws provide a good example of the type of legal system we could expect on the Red Planet. Like international waters, nobody can own Mars, so instead each ship needs to follow the rules of the country whose flag it flies under. And, just like sailors, Mars explorers are still expected to abide by those rules even when they’re off the ship.

[Related: Inside NASA’s plan to use Martian dirt to build houses on Mars]

Things get a little more complicated once you start adding other countries and companies into the Martian mix. On the International Space Station, for example, if an American astronaut were to hit a Russian astronaut over the head, first the US would have the right to determine whether a criminal act was committed. If the US doesn’t take action, then he could be tried under Russian jurisdiction.

In addition, any sizable, long-term colony on Mars is also going to need a local governing system. What form of government might or should take shape there? We’ll leave that discussion up to the political scientists.

Does Musk need permission to colonize Mars?

Currently, if you want to launch a rocket into space, you have to ask the government for permission. Then, depending on your activities in space, you have to apply for a second license to do specific things. For example, if you’re launching a telecom satellite, you’ll want to talk to the Federal Communications Commission.

However, as of yet “there is no license specifically for dealing with the legal implications of space colonization,” says von der Dunk. In fact, it’s not even clear which office would be in charge of giving out those licenses. NASA? The Federal Aviation Administration? A whole new branch of the government?

[Related: SpaceX’s all-civilian moon trip has a crew]

As the number of companies wanting to carry tourists into space increases, the government is going to need to figure out a licensing procedure soon.

Why bother enforcing Earth laws on another planet?

We’re supposed to avoid contaminating the celestial bodies that we explore, according to the Outer Space Treaty. Not only does that mean “don’t spread trash all over the solar system,” but it’s generally interpreted to mean “keep your microbes to yourself,” too.

If Earth microbes take root on Mars or Europa, we may never have the chance to find out if those worlds ever hosted alien life. So the major space agencies have a sort of “gentleman’s agreement,” says von der Dunk, to decontaminate their spacecraft as much as possible before sending them to other worlds. But human bodies are much harder to decontaminate, since our health depends on our microbes.

There a few sites on Mars that are considered deserving of heavier protection than others—areas where liquid water is thought to exist, for instance. Only the most thoroughly decontaminated vessels are supposed to enter those areas.

Will Elon Musk and his followers be expected to follow those same planetary protection “gentleman’s agreements”? The licensing process, mentioned above, could determine whether potential colonizers will be legally bound to avoid spreading their germs all over Mars.

“The US licensing process should make sure that the activities of Elon Musk and others do not violate key principles of planetary protection,” says von der Dunk. “The US has the power to make those binding of Elon Musk and whoever flies under his flag.”

[Related: Your ancestors might have been Martians]

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The planet Jupiter is famed for its immense size (a radius of 43,440.7 miles or 11 times wider than Earth) and its Giant Red Spot, a storm that has raged on the planet for hundreds of years. The fifth planet from the sun is not only the biggest in our solar system, but it also, according to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC), has the most moons. 

Astronomers discovered 12 new moons around Jupiter over the past two years, making the total number of Jovian moons 92.

The discovery knocks Saturn and its 83 confirmed moons out of first place. Both Jupiter and Saturn have tons of small moons that are believed to be fragments of bigger moons that have collided with comets, asteroids, and each other. 

[Related: We just got our most detailed look yet at Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa.]

As for the other planets in our solar system, Mercury and Venus are moonless, Earth has one, Mars has two moons, Uranus has 27 confirmed moons, and Neptune clocks in at 14.

The MCP recently added the new moons to their list, team member Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution told the Associated Press (AP). The team’s observations have also been submitted for publication.

“I hope we can image one of these outer moons close-up in the near future to better determine their origins,” Sheppard said in an email to the AP.

Telescopes in Chile and Hawaii discovered the moons in 2021 and 2022 and follow-up observations confirmed their orbits. Sheppard says that they range from 0.6 miles to 2 miles in size. 

According to Sky and Telescope, all of the newly discovered moons circle Jupiter far from its surface and take over 340 Earth days to complete a single orbit. Nine out of the 12 moons are particularly distant, with MPC estimating that they have orbits longer than 550 Earth days. They are also quite small—only five out of the nine distant moons are believed to have a diameter more than five miles.  

[Related: Dark matter, Jupiter’s moons, and more: What to expect from space exploration in 2023.]

These same nine moons also have retrograde orbits. The moons circle Jupiter in the opposite direction of its rotation. By comparison, the inner Jovian moons have prograde orbits, or orbits in the same direction of the planet’s rotation. 

The retrograde orbits mean that the huge gravitational influence of the planet may have captured the moons and the smaller ones might be the remains of largest celestial bodies that were broken apart by collisions, according to Sheppard.  

We can also expect to learn more about Jupiter’s moons over the next few years. The European Space Agency (ESA) is sending the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (aka Juice) into space in April to study the gas giant and some of its largest moons. NASA is scheduled to launch the Europa Clipper in October 2024 to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa,  which might have an ocean beneath its frozen crust.

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When a spacecraft blasts off the surface of Earth, it eventually exits our planet’s airspace and enters outer space. Where, precisely, that boundary lies is up for some debate. 

“In science, the boundaries we draw don’t exist in nature exactly,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “Where a boundary exists is where some quantity changes very rapidly over a short distance… And that is true at this edge of the atmosphere. But what you choose to call space and what you choose to call Earth—that’s a human decision that’s not forced on us by physics.”

The implications of deciding where Earth ends and space begins go beyond whether or not travelers earn their astronaut wings. Air traffic is typically regulated on the national level, with countries controlling the airspace over their land. Flying too low, for example, has the potential to inadvertently start an international conflict. 

But “space is intrinsically global,” McDowell says. Different international treaties apply to space. As more nations launch satellites, and private spaceflight companies build a suborbital space tourism industry, defining the distinction between Earth’s airspace and outer space is becoming increasingly important. 

Physics behind the Kármán line

The Kármán line is based on physics, in that it describes how the characteristics of Earth’s atmosphere at different altitudes affect a craft’s ability to fly. Planes stay airborne largely from lift generated by their wings against the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere. But as our atmosphere rises in altitude, it thins. At a certain point, the air is too thin for traditional aircraft, and any craft above that altitude require a propulsion system, such as a rocket, to remain aloft. That distinction is the Kármán line.

The line is named for Theodore von Kármán, an engineer and physicist who was born in Hungary in 1881. He became a prominent expert in rockets during World War II, and co-founded the United States’ Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is credited as being the first to calculate the altitude above which a craft would need to use a propulsion system to fly.

Von Kármán originally calculated the boundary to be roughly 50 miles above sea level. But, today, the Kármán line is commonly defined as an altitude of around 62 miles, or 100 kilometers. In fact, the agency that keeps track of standards and records in air and space, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, also uses this figure to define where space begins.

[Related: Where does outer space start?]

The thinking behind that round number of 100 kilometers, McDowell says, is that the boundary can’t be defined precisely because of the variability of the atmosphere. 

But McDowell wasn’t so sure that was the case. So he re-examined the history and calculations of the Kármán line in a paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica in 2018. He found that von Kármán’s original calculation was more accurate than previously thought, and with decades of advancement on atmospheric models, the variability is probably only within a few miles of the original 52 mile calculation. 

Is the Kármán line the only possible edge of space?

Some scientists have proposed other characteristics to define the boundary between Earth and space, such as the region in our planet’s orbit where a satellite breaks up upon reentry, McDowell says. “That, again, turns out to be in the 80s to 90s kilometers,” he says, which, in miles, is in the 50s.

Many US agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, typically use 50 miles as their boundary, too. The FAA and Air Force actually bestow astronaut wings on those who fly above an altitude of 50 miles. (However, not all passengers on a commercial flight will earn their wings, as in 2021 the FAA added criteria regarding a traveler’s contributions to a commercial space mission.)

But NASA Mission Control takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on aerodynamic lift, the space agency defines the point of reentry into Earth’s airspace from outer space as the place at which atmospheric drag becomes noticeable, at about 76 miles. 

There are other boundaries that some might consider for the edge of space, suggests McDowell. One is the Armstrong Limit, named for Harry G. Armstrong, an early American aerospace medicine physician, which is the altitude at which a human’s blood boils if they’re not protected from the low atmospheric pressure by a spacesuit, approximately 11 to 12 miles up. 

“You can play all kinds of games about what the criterion should be,” McDowell says. 

Another is more of a joke, McDowell says: The Ripley Line, which would be where nobody could hear you scream in space. “A very rough” calculation of the altitude of that boundary came out to a few hundred miles, he says, “but that could easily be totally wrong.”

Where is the edge of space on other planets?

This question of where a planet ends and space begins can be extrapolated to other worlds, McDowell says. A sort of Kármán line might exist on a world like Mars, because it also has an atmosphere (albeit a thinner one than Earth’s), he suggests. But the moon, for example, has no atmosphere. So does that mean it is entirely in space? Or is there a different kind of boundary, perhaps a gravitational one, that should be considered?

[Related: Jane Poynter wants to send you to the edge of space in a very big balloon]

“In the future, when we have, you know, Lunar City, and you’re taking off from Lunar City into orbit around the moon, at what point do you get handed over from local air traffic control to deep space traffic control?” he says. Or, “when do you have to consider the difference between a local flight or a local athlete jumping very high into lunar gravity, versus something that counts as space traffic?”

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Here are some of the cosmic events to keep your eye on with your Valentine (or groundhog). If you happen to get any stellar sky photos, tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: ‘Skyglow’ is rapidly diminishing our nightly views of the stars.]

February 1 and 2 – The ‘Green Comet’ reaches closes point to Earth 

Last month, we told you about Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), a newly discovered comet that has since made a flurry of headlines. This green-tailed comet has drawn closer to the inner solar system and is approaching its brightest magnitude. It will reach its perigee, or closest point to Earth (within 26 million miles) on February 1 and 2 in the Northern Hemisphere. It might be visible with binoculars, but visibility is not a given. Your best bet is to look northward after sunset. 

The comet was discovered in March 2022 by astronomers Frank Masci and Bryce Bolin at the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a part of the  Palomar Observatory in California. Astronomers calculated that it only orbits the sun about every 50,000 years, which means that it was last visible on Earth around the time of the Neanderthals.

February 4 and 5 – Full snow moon

February’s full moon will reach its peak illumination at 1:30 PM EST on February 5. Since it will be below the horizon, the best view of this second full moon of 2023 will best be taken the night before or later on Sunday February 5. The moon will drift above the horizon in the eastern sky  around sunset and will reach its highest point around midnight.

The name snow moon is pretty straightforward, as February is known for heavy snowfall. It is also called the Eagle Moon or Migizi-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Hungry Month or Kagali in Cherokee (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, North Carolina), and the Midwinter Moon, or Tsha’tekohselha in Oneida.

It is also close to the 52nd anniversary of NASA astronaut Alan Shepard hitting the first golf ball on the moon on February 6, 1971. Fore!

February 20 – New moon

If you prefer new moons to full moons, the new moon will rise at 2:09 AM EST. The new moon occurs when the moon is between the Earth and sun, and the side of the Moon that is in shadow faces Earth.

The moon’s diameter is 2,160 miles, which is less than the width of the US (approximately 3,000 miles), and 0.27 of Earth’s diameter (7,926 miles), according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

[Related: What to expect from space exploration in 2023]

February 26 – SpaceX Falcon 9 scheduled to launch of astronauts to International Space Station

If all goes according to plan, SpaceX and NASA will launch Crew-6 from Kennedy Space Center at the end of this month. 

NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will be aboard the launch and are scheduled to spend about six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The mission is the sixth contracted astronaut flight that SpaceX flies to the ISS for NASA, but Crew-6 will be the ninth crewed orbital mission for the private space flight company.

As with all launches, this one could be rescheduled and viewing details are still TBD, but can be found here.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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When I need to remember the order of the planets I recite the phrase I learned in school: My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine… and then I stumble just as I get to “Pizzas.”

Because “Pizzas” stands for “Pluto,” and Pluto is not a planet and hasn’t been for the greater part of the 21st century. For 76 years people knew it as the smallest, most distant member of the nine-object club, but then, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) changed all that. An astronomer from the California Institute of Technology named Mike Brown had discovered a few odd objects out beyond all the known planets. One, Eris, appeared to be larger than Pluto (although we now know they’re almost exactly the same size).

The astronomers who make up the IAU faced a hard choice: label all the new objects and hundreds of future objects as planets, or pick a narrow definition that would save the deeper meaning of the title. They picked the second option. A couple hundred scientists voted to demote Pluto and named it the first of a new group of worlds: the dwarf planets.

Why is Pluto not a planet anymore?

When the IAU officially defined the word “planet” for the first time, Pluto didn’t fit. To keep its planetary status along with Earth, Saturn, and the rest, it needed to pass three tests:

• A planet must orbit the sun.
• A planet must be (mostly) round.
• A planet must clear its neighborhood of other objects.

Pluto passes the first test with flying colors, making one loop around the sun every 248 years. Things that fail this test include objects that circle other bodies, like how the moon orbits Earth.

The second test posed no problem either. Smaller asteroids (which do orbit the sun) can have funky shapes. Itokawa, for example, looks like a lumpy potato. But once an object gets big enough, the force of its gravity pulls down any parts that stick out too far, creating a round shape. Pluto is big enough to be round.

The real challenge to the ex-planet was the third test, which gets to the heart of what many astronomers think of when they hear the word “planet.” From Mercury to Neptune, and yes, even Pluto, most planets get their names from Roman gods. As such, we expect them to be masters of their domain. The solar system is full grains of sand, massive gas giants, and many, many objects in between. Having so many objects of different sizes whizzing around the sun gets pretty messy. In the middle of all that chaos, it’s the planets, as Pluto-slayer Mike Brown writes on his blog, that create order.

Take the asteroid belt, a loose collection of over a million pieces of planetary rubble that live between Mars and Jupiter. The fate of a rocky asteroid is uncertain, because its next orbit could bring it too close to Jupiter, whose gravitational pull could push it in a completely different direction. Or it could crash into another asteroid and burst into pieces.

[Related: NASA’s New Horizons mission begins again at the edge of the solar system]

The orbits of the eight classical planets, however, are mostly clear of other objects. No one’s going to mess with Uranus or Mars. Unlike the asteroids, anything in a planet’s path has either been absorbed, captured as moons, or booted away. After four and a half billion years of jostling for position, the eight classical planets are the last large objects left standing in their orbit.

Pluto is different. If you look at the solar system overall, it lies somewhere between an asteroid and a planet. No nearby object threatens to kick it away, as far as astronomers know. But now that researchers understand more about its environment, it just doesn’t look that special anymore. Instead of being the most distant planet, Pluto seems to be the closest member of the Kuiper Belt, a donut-shaped ring of perhaps a trillion comets and ice balls that orbit beyond Neptune. At least 200 of these objects are probably big enough to be round, qualifying them as dwarf planets. And like asteroids, they all move in similar ways. “Pluto,” Brown writes, “will always be part of the swarm.”

[Related: Pluto’s icy volcanoes may have once belched ‘antifreeze lava’]

Although the word “planet” doesn’t mean that much scientifically, humans like to have tidy labels for separating things into groups. Asteroids, comets, and moons have proved useful categories, so it helps to have a complimentary “planet” label if we want to talk meaningfully about all the objects that orbit the sun.

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In elementary school science class, we learned that the Earth has three main layers: the crust, mantle, and the core. In reality, the core—which is over 4,000 miles wide—has two layers: a liquid outer core and a solid and dense inner core made mostly of iron that actually rotates.

A study published January 23 in the journal Nature Geoscience finds that this rotation may have paused recently—and could possibly be reversing. The team from Peking University in China believe that these findings could indicate that the changes in the rotation occur on a decadal scale and are helping us understand more about how what’s going on deep beneath the Earth affects the surface.

[Related: A rare gas is leaking from Earth’s core. Could it be a clue to the planet’s creation?]

The Earth’s inner core is separated from the rest of the solid Earth by its liquid outer core, so it rotates at a different pace and direction than the planet itself. A magnetic field created by the outer core generates the spin and the mantle’s gravitational effects balance it out. Understanding how the inner core rotates could shed light on how all of the Earth’s layers interact.

In this study, seismologists Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song looked at seismic waves. They analyzed the difference in the waveform and travel time of the waves created during near-identical earthquakes that have passed along similar paths through the Earth’s inner core since the 1960s. They particularly studied the earthquakes that struck between 1995 and 2021.

Before 2009, the inner core appeared to be rotating slightly faster than the surface and mantle, but the rotation began slowing down and paused around 2009. Looking down at the core now wouldn’t reveal any spinning since the inner core and surface are spinning at roughly the same rate.

“That means it’s not a steady rotation as was originally reported some 20 years ago, but it’s actually more complicated,” Bruce Buffett, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, told the New Scientist.

[Related: Scientists wielded giant lasers to simulate an exoplanet’s super-hot core.]

Additionally, the team believes that this could be associated with a reversal of the inner core rotation on a seven-decade schedule. They believe that a previous turning point occurred in the early 1970s and say that this variation does correlate with small changes in geophysical observations at the Earth’s surface, such as the length of a day or changes in magnetic fields.

The authors conclude that this fluctuation in the inner core’s rotation that coincides with some periodic changes in the Earth’s surface system, demonstrates the interactions occurring between Earth’s different layers.

However, scientists are debating the speed of the rotation and whether it varies. This new theory is just one of several models explaining the rotation. “It’s weird that there’s a solid iron ball kind of floating in the middle of the Earth,” John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California who was not involved with the study, told The New York Times. “No matter which model you like, there’s some data that disagrees with it.”

Since studying the inner core is very difficult and physically going there is almost impossible (unless you’re famed sci-fi author Jules Verne), what’s really going on in the Earth’s core could always remain a mystery.

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Sci-fi storytellers love to spin tales about laser-wielding aliens who visit Earth—but in reality, we’re the ones now using sophisticated laser beams to hunt for signs of extraterrestrial life.

Geologists and engineers at the University of Maryland recently created a new piece of technology, designed to fly in space, that uses light to analyze molecules. This work, published last week in Nature Astronomy, takes a common molecule-analyzing lab instrument here on Earth, known as the Orbitrap, and shrinks it down to make it compact and light enough to fit on a NASA solar system mission. They also combine the improved Orbitrap with a laser, which can break up material from a planet’s surface to prepare it for analysis.

“I am excited to see what kind of complex molecules we would be able to detect beyond Earth,” says Grace Ni, University of Maryland geologist and co-author on the study. “The next-generation Orbitrap analyzer offers about 200 times improvements” in the detail of its measurements compared to older systems, she adds. It could fly on missions within the next decade.

The Orbitrap is a tool for mass spectrometry, a go-to technique for scientists that separates molecules by their mass and measures how much of each there is in a sample. Although these machines are found in medical, biological, and other industrial labs across the planet, they’re also huge, weighing around 400 pounds—a little heavier than a giant panda. Offworld missions are often limited in how much they can carry to their destinations. One of these behemoth Orbitraps just would not fly. The new version, though, only weighs about 17 pounds.

[Related: The Milky Way could have dozens of alien civilizations capable of contacting us]

Plus, mission teams must often choose between one big component or multiple smaller tools. Selecting instruments for a space mission is “like choosing what tools you want on your pocket Swiss army knife,” explains Zach Ulibarri, an aerospace engineer at Cornell University who was not part of the new study. “But, at the same time, the tools on a Swiss army knife are smaller and lighter than the tools you keep in your garage, just like the instruments on your spacecraft have to be smaller and lighter than the full-sized ones you keep in a laboratory.”

Before it can measure a molecule, the upgraded laser-wielding tool uses ultraviolet pulses to break up the compounds from a planet’s surface—such as rocks on Mars, the icy outer shell of Enceladus, or other interesting targets for possible life in our solar system. It then funnels them into the miniaturized Orbitrap spectrometer, where the sample’s composition is measured. 

Eddie Schweiterman, a University of California Riverside astrobiologist not involved in the new Orbitrap project, explains that this tool will take the “fingerprints” of molecules related to life, while also providing information about the surrounding geology of whatever planet or moon is being explored. Context is key for signs of life—scientists must be able to rule out non-living sources of the same life-like chemicals. This new laser-Orbitrap system would also allow scientists to do this detailed chemical analysis remotely via a straightforward robotic mission, like a lander or rover, as opposed to a sample return to Earth.

Although there is a lot of ongoing work to detect biosignatures on distant exoplanets, that’s a totally different ballgame than exploring the solar system with a probe via upgraded Orbitrap. The large organic molecules to be analyzed with missions featuring Orbitrap “cannot be easily observed remotely, particularly at interstellar distances,” Schweiterman says. Instead, exoplanets can only be observed from light-years away via our telescopes. But astronomers could send robots equipped with this tool to the surfaces of the planets nearest us.

[Related: Why astronomers are blasting Earth’s location to potential intelligent aliens]

There’s also one more catch. The large amount of data generated from the new system “could be a headache for data storage and transmission during a space mission,” according to Ni. Hopefully, as computer technology inevitably advances, engineers will come up with clever ways to deal with this problem. Even then, data storage isn’t a dream-killer for the Orbitrap—just another thing to consider when designing a spacecraft. As Ulibarri says, “each instrument has its own advantages and disadvantages. There is no perfect instrument; there are only trade-offs between different ones.” 

Building a fully functioning spacecraft is always difficult, but new instrument technologies like the improved Orbitrap expand the possibilities for future missions. “It’s always exciting to add a new tool to the potential spacecraft toolkit,” says Ulibarri. “And the Orbitrap is a particularly powerful tool.”

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How old is Earth? It may seem like a simple question to answer. The typical ballpark estimate is that our planet is around 4.5 billion years old. But the closer planetary scientists look, the squishier that story gets. Nuances about how our planet formed could shift the age of Earth by half a billion years or so. 

“An age is easy to talk about, but it becomes more and more complex as you zoom in,” says geology professor Thomas Lapen, who chairs the University of Houston’s Earth and atmospheric sciences department. As scientists have sought to determine more precise measurements of Earth’s age, they’ve had to grapple with the specifics of how our planet came to be.

“When you’re born, it’s an instant in time,” Lapen explains. But planetary formation is a process that takes millions of years. To assign an age to Earth, astrophysicists, planetary scientists, and geologists have to determine which point in the process could be considered Earth’s birth. 

When was Earth “born”?

About 4.6 billion years ago, gas and dust swirled in orbit around the newly formed sun. Over the first millions of years of the solar system, particles collided and merged into asteroids and the seeds of planets. Those space rocks kept smashing into one another, some growing larger and larger, shaping the solar system as we see it today. 

But planets aren’t simply big rock piles. As they amass material, these celestial bodies also differentiate into the layers of a core, mantle, and crust (at least in the case of Earth and the other terrestrial planets). Accretion and differentiation take time, likely on the order of tens of millions of years. Some might consider a point in that stage of Earth’s formation to be our planet’s birth. But Lapen says he thinks of it as Earth’s conception, and birth came later, when a cataclysmic event also formed the moon.

[Related: June 29 was Earth’s shortest day since the invention of atomic clocks]

According to the widely accepted giant impact theory, during the chaos of the early days of our solar system, the proto-Earth collided with another small body about the size of Mars. When the two slammed together, the debris coalesced into the moon in orbit around Earth. 

This impact also is thought to have essentially “reset” the materials that made up the planet, Lapen says. At the time, a thick magma ocean may have covered proto-Earth. Upon the powerful collision, the material of both bodies mixed together and coalesced into the planet and moon system we know today. Evidence for such a “reset” comes from both terrestrial and lunar rocks that contain identical forms of oxygen, Lapen explains. 

“Proto-Earth was, in all likelihood, destroyed or changed in composition,” Lapen says. “In my mind, the Earth wasn’t the Earth as we know it until the moon-forming event.”

If this event marked our planet’s birth, that would make Earth somewhere between 4.4 billion and 4.52 billion years old. But determining a more specific age for our planet requires sifting through ancient evidence. 

Assigning a number to our planet’s age

Like detectives searching for clues of an old crime, planetary scientists have to look at the evidence that remains today when piecing together our planet’s early history. But with all the turmoil during that chapter—the roiling magma ocean and intense geological turnover—the proof can be hard to find. 

One way to constrain the age of Earth is to search for the oldest rocks on the planet, Lapen explains, which formed right after the magma ocean hardened into a solid surface. For that date, scientists look to zircons discovered in the Jack Hills in Western Australia—the oldest known minerals. 

To determine the age of these crystals, a team of scientists used a technique called radiometric dating, which measures the uranium they contain. Because this radioactive element decays into lead at a known rate, scientists can calculate a mineral’s age based on the ratio of uranium to lead in the sample. This method revealed the zircons are approximately 4.4 billion years old.

These rocks suggest that the Earth-moon system must have formed sometime before 4.4 billion years ago, because the rock record “would be obliterated by the moon-forming event,” Lapen says. So the planet is no younger than 4.4 billion years old. But how much older could it be? To answer that, Lapen says, scientists turn elsewhere—including the moon.

[Related: Here’s how life on Earth might have formed out of thin air and water]

Rocks on the Earth’s satellite body are better preserved than the ones here, because the moon does not undergo processes like plate tectonics that would melt and reshuffle its surface. There are two main sources for these clues: in lunar meteorites that fall to Earth and in the samples collected directly from the moon during NASA’s Apollo program. 

Like proto-Earth, the young moon was also covered in a magma ocean. The oldest rocks taken from the lunar surface can indicate when the moon’s crust formed. Scientists have conducted radiometric dating on zircon fragments collected during the Apollo 14 mission, correcting the calculations for cosmic ray exposure, and determined that the lunar crust hardened approximately 4.51 billion years ago. 

There would have been a period of time between the collision and the bodies coalescing, cooling, and differentiating, Lapen says, so this date has a window of uncertainty, too, of about 50 million years. 

“Dating the exact event is very challenging,” he says. Lapen estimates the Earth-moon system likely formed between 4.51 billion and 4.52 billion years ago, but some scientists say calculations could be as many as 50 million years off.

Another way to constrain that window of time is to look at rocks that existed when the proto-Earth was forming. When the planets solidified from the debris around the young sun, not all of the material coalesced into the worlds and their moons we see today. Some remained preserved in asteroids or comets.

Sometimes those solar system time capsules come to us as meteorites that fall to our planet’s surface. The oldest known such space rock, Lapen says, is the meteorite Erg Chech 002. It is thought to be a fragment of an igneous crust of a primitive protoplanet from the early solar system. As such, dating the Erg Chech 002 meteorite provides a snapshot of a time when the proto-Earth was likely at a similar stage in its conception.

“If the ‘birth of the Earth’ is defined as the formation time of the first proto-Earth nucleus or protoplanet that ultimately grew through accretion to form the present-day Earth,” Lapen says, “then perhaps that was as long ago as the age of [Erg Chech 002].” Scientists calculated this chunk of igneous crust crystallized approximately 4.565 billion years ago.

Can Earth’s age be refined?

On human timescales, an uncertainty of 50 million years around when the Earth-moon system formed sounds vast and imprecise. But on planetary timescales, particularly billions of years ago, “it’s a good estimate,” Lapen says.

“The further back we look, oftentimes the less precise things are because of the gaps in the record. It’s a relatively short period of time, where a lot of things were happening—there was the impact, everything had to coalesce, and cool, and differentiate into sturdy rocky bodies that have a core, mantle, and crust,” he says.

However, scientists aren’t done. There is always the opportunity to get more precise and accurate measurements of Earth’s age, Lapen says, particularly as researchers obtain additional samples from the moon, meteorites, and asteroids.

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Space weather can be wild. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which can produce solar flares, are especially blustery, and can cause everything from beautiful auroras that dance across the night sky or power outages and other technological interference. They can even endanger astronauts by throwing radiation their way.

But like with weather on Earth, can we improve predicting when bursts of electromagnetic energy like solar flares are coming?

[Related: How worried should we be about solar flares and space weather?]

A team of scientists from NorthWest Research Associates (NWRA) investigated data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and found some new clues for weather prediction in the sun’s upper atmosphere. The identified small signals in the sun’s corona that can help pinpoint when regions in the sun are more likely to produce the bursts of light and particles released from the sun during a solar flare.

They detail the findings in a study published January 16 in The Astrophysical Journal. Most importantly, they discovered that in the regions about to flare, the corona produces flashes “like small sparklers before the big fireworks.”

Previously, scientists have studied activity in the lower layers of the sun’s atmosphere (specifically the protosphere and chromosphere) and how it can signal impending flare activity in active regions. This warning is typically marked by groups of strong magnetic regions of the sun that appear darker and cooler than the surrounding area called sunspots.

“We can get some very different information in the corona than we get from the photosphere, or ‘surface’ of the sun,” said KD Leka, lead author on the new study from Nagoya University in Japan, in a statement. “Our results may give us a new marker to distinguish which active regions are likely to flare soon and which will stay quiet over an upcoming period of time.”

[Related: World’s largest telescope array is almost ready to stare straight into the sun.]

The team used a new publicly available image database of the active regions on the sun captured by the SDO. It combines more than eight years of images of images taken using ultraviolet and extreme-ultraviolet light. The images and a newly developed statistical method created by co-author Graham Barnes will help scientists better understand the physics happening in the sun’s magnetically active regions.

“It’s the first time a database like this is readily available for the scientific community, and it will be very useful for studying many topics, not just flare-ready active regions,” said Karin Dissauer, a co-author and NWRA research scientist who led the database project along with engineer and co-author Eric L. Wagner, in a statement. “With this research, we are really starting to dig deeper. Down the road, combining all this information from the surface up through the corona should allow forecasters to make better predictions about when and where solar flares will happen.”

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The past few years have been a space launch boom: Late 2021 saw the long-awaited arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and in 2022 NASA finally launched its massive new Space Launch System Moon rocket. This year will continue that trend, as several scientific and commercial craft zoom off our world to orbit and beyond.

This year’s historic flights include missions to Jupiter and the asteroid belt, robotic moon landings, and the maiden flight of a new spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the aging International Space Station (ISS). Here are some of the major launches to look forward to in 2023.

Asteroids and icy moons

Both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have big plans for studying celestial bodies beyond the orbit of Mars that kick off in 2023.

ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, or JUICE mission, will study the icy Galilean moons of Jupiter, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. Of the three moons, Europa has so far garnered the lion’s share of scientific interest due to the global liquid water ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust, an environment that could host alien life. But evidence now suggests Callisto and Ganymede may also host subsurface liquid water oceans. JUICE, which is scheduled to launch atop an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana sometime in April and will arrive at Jupiter in 2031, will fly by each of the three moons to compare the three icy worlds.

[Related: Jupiter’s moons are about to get JUICE’d for signs of life]

The JUICE spacecraft will enter orbit around Ganymede in 2034, the first time a spacecraft has circled a moon other than Earth’s, where it will spend roughly a year studying the satellite in greater detail. Ganymede, in addition to its potential subsurface ocean and potential habitability, is the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field. JUICE will study how this field interacts with Jupiter’s even  larger one.

NASA’s Psyche mission, meanwhile, will blast off no earlier than October 10 on a mission to rendezvous with its namesake asteroid, when it arrives in the belt between Mars and Jupiter in August 2029. The Psyche mission was originally scheduled to launch in August 2022, but was delayed due to problems developing mission-critical software at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The asteroid 16 Psyche is a largely metallic space rock that scientists believe could be the exposed core of a protoplanet that formed in the early solar system. If that theory bears out, the Psyche spacecraft could end up traveling millions of miles to give scientists a better understanding of the Earth’s iron core far beneath their feet.

India returns to the moon

The Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO, is going back to the moon with its Chandrayaan-3 mission, which is scheduled to launch over the summer. The space agency’s Chandrayaan-2 mission carried an orbiter and lander to the moon in 2019, but a software glitch caused the lander to crash on the lunar surface. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is ditching the orbiter in favor of a redesigned lander and rover intended for the lunar South Pole. Carrying a seismometer and spectrographs, among other instruments, the lander and rover will study the chemical composition and geology of the polar region. 

[Related: 10 incredible lunar missions that paved the way for Artemis]

The hunt for dark matter

Astrophysicists believe dark matter and dark energy shape the structures of entire universes—and drive the accelerated expansion of ours. But experts don’t understand much about these enigmatic phenomena. ESA’s Euclid space telescope, scheduled to launch sometime in 2023, will measure the effects of these dark forces on the cosmos over time to try and discern their properties.

After launch, Euclid will make its way to the same operational location as JWST, entering an orbit around Lagrangian Point 2, about 1 million miles behind Earth. From there, Euclid will use its nearly 4-foot diameter mirror, visible light imaging system, and near-infrared spectrometer to survey a third of the sky out to a distance of about 15 billion light years. That will give a view  some 10 billion years into the past. By studying how galaxies and galaxy clusters change over eons and across much of the sky, Euclid scientists hope to grasp how dark matter and dark energy shape galactic formation and the evolution of the entire universe.

Boeing catches up to SpaceX

Boeing will finally launch a crewed test flight of its Starliner spacecraft sometime in April 2023. Boeing developed the Starliner, a capsule that holds up to seven people, as a competitor to the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Like Dragon, Starliner will ferry astronauts and cargo to and from the ISS as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

[Related: ISS astronauts are building objects that couldn’t exist on Earth]

But while Crew Dragon began flying astronauts to the ISS in November 2020, the Starliner ran into many delay-causing problems, beginning with a software glitch that kept the spacecraft from rendezvousing with the ISS during an uncrewed test flight in December 2020. Boeing kept at it, however, and completed a second attempt at an uncrewed rendezvous with the ISS in May 2022, paving the way for the coming crewed test flight.

If all goes well, NASA will integrate Starliner flights alongside Crew Dragon launches within the Commercial Crew program, providing the space agency some redundancy in case of problems with either type of spacecraft.

The (private) enterprise

As NASA becomes more and more reliant on Boeing, SpaceX, and other contractors for flights to the ISS, private space operators have big plans of their own for 2023.

Axiom Space plans to send a crew of private citizens for a two-week stay on the ISS in the  summer, following the company’s first mission in April 2022 when four private astronauts spent more than two weeks aboard the space station. Axiom Space plans to build a new habitat—first connected to the ISS, then separated to create a free-flying space station when NASA retires the ISS in 2031.

[Related: SpaceX’s all-civilian moon trip has a crew]

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who funded the first ever all-private orbital space flight in September 2021 with the Inspiration 4 mission, will also be back at it in 2023. The Polaris Dawn mission is scheduled to launch no sooner than March and will once again see Isaacman fly aboard a chartered SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft along with three crewmates. Unlike Inspiration 4, at least two of the Polaris Dawn crew plan to conduct the first-ever private astronaut spacewalks outside a spacecraft.

The Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin, meanwhile, will attempt to launch the first test flight of its orbital rocket, known as New Glenn, sometime in 2023. While the company has flown celebrities such as Bezos and William Shatner to the edge of space aboard its suborbital New Shepard rocket, the company has yet to make an orbital flight. This year, it’s aiming higher.

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Following over a decade of research, including two years of testing origami-inspired components, a small prototype satellite designed to harvest solar energy launched yesterday morning aboard SpaceX’s most recent Falcon 9 rocket launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida. If its initial experiments are successful, arrays similar to Caltech’s Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD) could one day beam essentially endless renewable energy back to Earth via microwave transmitters.

After reading a Popular Science article on the concept in 2011, Caltech Board of Trustees lifetime member Donald Bren approached the school in hopes of making the science fiction idea a reality. The resultant Space Solar Power Project, co-funded by defense manufacturer Northrop Grumman alongside the Bren family’s $100 million endowment, saw its first major milestone completion yesterday via the SSPD arrival above Earth.

[Related: This space-adapted solar panel can fold like origami.]

Over the next few weeks and months, the roughly 110-pound prototype will send back data on three main projects. The Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment (DOLCE) will test lightweight, foldable structures that can unfurl to collect sunlight. Meanwhile, ALBA (Italian for “dawn”), a collection of 32 different varieties of photovoltaic cells, will determine which could work best in the space’s extremely harsh environment. Finally, the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE) will test microwave transmitters that may one day transmit the collected solar power via wireless electricity.

Speaking yesterday with The Los Angeles Times, Caltech senior researcher Michael Kelzenberg explained that the SSPD’s first tests are not meant to supply Earth with solar space energy just yet. Instead, the team hopes to begin determining which materials, designs, and methods could result in the most efficient and affordable solutions in the future.

[Related: Solar energy company wants to bolt panels directly into the ground.]

It’s hard to overstate just how revolutionary the prospect of space solar energy farming could be for humanity’s power needs. In 2007, a study from the National Space Society estimated that a single, half-mile wide band of photovoltaics orbiting above Earth could hypothetically generate the same amount of energy as the entire planet’s remaining oil supplies over the course of just one year. To do this, Popular Science explained in 2011 that high energy lasers could transmit the solar supply back to Earth at roughly 80 percent efficiency to a global network of receivers, thus providing clean power across the world, even to places with previously unreliable electricity grids.

A multitude of hurdles remain, most notably the vast costs attached to any space engineering project. Still, as Ali Hajimiri, Caltech’s Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering and co-director of SSPP, explained in a statement, “no matter what happens, this prototype is a major step forward.” 

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A new year means resolutions, a fresh calendar, and 365 days of skygazing ahead of us. While January’s lack of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere can be a bit depressing, the extra darkness means more time for looking up at the night sky. The cold air this time of year is also less hazy than warmer, humid summer air, making celestial bodies easier to see. 

Here are some of the cosmic events to keep your eye on as you ring in 2023. If you happen to get any stellar sky photos, tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: The world needs dark skies more than ever. Here’s why.]

January 1 – Lunar occultation of Uranus

The night sky doesn’t take a holiday. The moon will pass in front of the planet Uranus, creating a lunar occultation, which is similar to an eclipse. Uranus will disappear behind the unilluminated side of the moon and reappear from behind the illuminated side of the moon.

Lunar occultations are only visible from a small fraction of our planet’s surface, and this month’s event will be visible from parts of Europe, Canada, and parts of the United States near New York City, but during daylight hours in the Big Apple. The event will begin when Uranus disappears behind the moon at about 3:29 p.m. EST and re-appear at about 4:37 p.m. EST.

It is important to be extremely careful when pointing binoculars or telescopes at the sky when the sun is out. Even a momentary glance at the sun can cause permanent blindness. 

January 3 and 4 – Quadrantids meteor shower peak

The Quadrantids, this year’s first meteor shower, typically runs between mid-November through mid-January. It’s predicted to peak early in the first few days of the month.

Under a dark sky with no moon and when the radiant point is higher in the sky, the Quadrantids can produce over 100 meteors per hour. But this year Earth’s satellite won’t be very cooperative. A bright and nearly full moon will shine almost all night, so a good bet for viewing fireballs is from late at night on January 3. Another viewing option is during the hour or so of true darkness after moonset and shortly before dawn on January 4.

[Related: Why we turn stars into constellations.]

January 6 – Full wolf moon

The first full moon of the year will rise at 6:08 p.m. EST. It is called the wolf moon in reference to the hungry packs of wolves that prowl during the winter months. Some other Native American names for January’s full moon are the Great Spirit Moon, or Gichimanidoo-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) and the Someone’s Ears are Freezing Moon, or Teyakohuhtya’ks in Oneida.

This year’s event is also called a micromoon, which means that the full moon is at its farthest point from Earth (about 252,600 miles away). In astronomical terms, this is known as an apogee. It’s basically the opposite of a supermoon. The distance between Earth and our moon changes because the moon orbits Earth in an elliptical path, where one side is nearer to Earth and the other is farther away. The distance affects the moon’s size and brightness, but it’s not typically visible to the naked eye–except in cases such as this. 

January 31 – Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF reaches peak brightness

Astronomers discovered this comet on March 2, 2022, using the Samuel Oschin robotic telescope, at the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) on Mt. Palomar in southern California. This comet has been drawing closer to the inner solar system ever since, and it’s also getting brighter. When it comes nearest to Earth and the sun, it should be easily spotted with binoculars. It is predicted to be in the direction of the constellation Corona Borealis, which is currently visible for a few hours after sunset and then rises a few hours before the sun. Its brightness will continue to increase into the month of February.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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Martian history was made yesterday when NASA’s Perseverance rover deposited its first rock sample on Mars. Throughout the next two months, the rover will leave 10 titanium tubes at a location called Three Forks. This is an early part of the Mars Sample Return campaign, where NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will collect and return the first samples of Martian rock and regolith, or broken rock and dust.

This historic first sample drop contained a chalk-size core of igneous rock that is informally named Malay. The sample was collected on January 31, 2022 in a region of Mars’ Jezero Crater called South Séítah. According to NASA, it took Perseverance’s complex Sampling and Caching System almost an hour to retrieve the metal tube from inside the rover’s belly, take one last look with its internal CacheCam, and then drop the sample about 3 feet onto a carefully selected patch of Martian ground.

[Related: For the first time, humans can hear a dust devil roar across Mars.]

Once NASA engineers confirmed Malay was on the ground, the team positioned a camera at the end of Perseverance’s seven-foot long robotic arm called WATSON. The engineers moved WATSON so that it could look beneath the rover and make sure the rover’s wheels didn’t run over the tube.

The team also wanted to make sure that the tube landed correctly and is standing on its end. The tube has a flat end piece called a glove to make it easier for future missions to scoop it up. If the tube is not placed correctly, the mission has a series of written commands for Perseverance to carefully knock the tube over with a part of its robotic arm.

Over the next few weeks, the team will have more chances to see whether the rover needs to use its special technique, as the rover deposits more samples at Three Forks.

“Seeing our first sample on the ground is a great capstone to our prime mission period, which ends on January 6,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in a statement. “It’s a nice alignment that, just as we’re starting our cache, we’re also closing this first chapter of the mission.” JPL built Perseverance and is leading the mission.

Perseverance’s belly currently has 17 samples from the Red Planet, including one atmospheric sample. The Mars Sample Return campaign’s plan is for Perseverance to deliver samples to a future robotic lander. Then, the lander will use a robotic arm to place the samples inside a containment capsule that’s onboard a small rocket that will blast off to Mars orbit. Finally, another spacecraft will capture the sample container and return it back to Earth.

[Related: NASA’s Perseverance rover is on a hunt for microbes on Mars.]

The purpose of this sample depot is as a backup in case Perseverance can’t deliver its samples to a future lander. If that happens, a pair of Sample Recovery Helicopters will swoop in to get them.

One of the key objectives for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is studying astrobiology—including searching for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. Perseverance will look at Mars’ past climate, current geology, help pave the way for future human exploration, and will be the first mission to collect and store Martian rock and regolith.

Future missions in in cooperation with ESA will collect the sealed samples and bring them back to Earth for analysis.

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For years, scientists have been working out ways to navigate across the lunar surface, a task that’s been a herculean undertaking without tools like the GPS we have on Earth. 

Since the moon has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, it’s difficult to judge both the distance and size of faraway landmarks as there’s a lack of perspective from the horizon. Trees or buildings on Earth offer hazy but helpful points of reference for distance, but such an illusion is impossible on the moon. Additionally, without an atmosphere to scatter light, the sun’s bright rays would skew the visual and depth perception of an astronaut on the moon, making it a real challenge to get around the vast, unmapped terrain. 

On Earth, “we have GPS, and it’s easy to take advantage of that and not think about all the technology that goes into it,” says Alvin Yew, a research engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But now when we’re on the   moon, we just don’t have that.” 

Inspired by previous research on lunar navigation, Yew is developing an AI system that guides explorers across the lunar floor by scanning the horizon for distinct landmarks. Trained on data gathered from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the system works by recreating features on the lunar horizon as they would appear to an explorer standing on the surface of the moon. 

“Because [the moon] has no atmosphere, there’s not a lot of scattering of the light,” says Yew. But by using the outline of the landscape, “we’re able to get a very clear demarcation of where the ground is relative to space.” 

[Related: With Artemis, NASA is aiming for the moon once more. But where will it land?]

Yew’s AI system would be able to navigate using geographic features like boulders, ridges, and even craters, whose distance would normally be difficult to accurately locate for a person. These measurements could be used to match features identified in images already captured by astronauts and rovers, in a similar way to how our GPS spots locations on Earth. Developing GPS-like technology that’s specifically tuned to help explorers get around the moon is especially important for supporting autonomous robotic operations, Yew says. Now that NASA’s Artemis I mission recently finished with a successful splashdown earlier this month, such technology will also be needed for humans to return to the moon in the not-so-distant future. When astronauts of the upcoming Artemis III mission make landfall, having handheld or integral systems to help conquer the new terrain could be the deciding factor in how far (and how well) they can explore, both on the moon and beyond. 

“NASA’s focus on trying to get to the moon, and eventually to Mars someday, requires an investment of these vital technologies,“ says Yew. His work is also planned to complement the moon’s future “internet,” called LunaNet. The framework will support communications, lunar navigation operations, as well as many other science services on the moon. According to NASA scientists, the collection of lunar satellites aims to offer internet access similar to Earth’s, a network that spacecraft and future astronauts can tap into without needing to schedule data transfers in advance, like space missions currently do. 

Cheryl Gramling, the associate chief for technology of the mission engineering and systems analysis division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, says the moon is a testbed where we can take lessons learned from our planet, and see how they translate to deeper space exploration. 

“You also don’t have the fundamental infrastructure that we’ve built up on the Earth,” she says. The moon is like a blank slate: “You have to think about, well, ‘what is it that you need?’”

Much like how different internet providers allow their customers access to the web and other services, Gramling says that NASA, as well as other space agencies like the ESA or JAXA, could come together to comprise LunaNet. “It’s extending the internet to space,” she says. These “providers” (in this case, space agencies like NASA, ESA, and JAXA) would be able to communicate with each other and share data across networks, much like different pieces of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are able to work in tandem. 

“Looking at what we have implemented on Earth and taking it over to the moon is a challenge, but at the same time, it’s an opportunity to think of how we make it work,” says Juan Crenshaw, a member of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s navigation and mission design branch. The goal, he says, is to create a network that isn’t constrained to one single implementation or purpose, and enables standards and protocols for diverse users. “If we build an interoperable service, it allows us to provide better coverage and services to users with less assets, more efficiently.”

[Related: Is it finally time for a permanent base on the moon?]

But LunaNet is still a long way from coming online—it’ll be some time before astronauts can download games or stream their favorite space movie like they’d be able to on Earth. While LunaNet’s service volume is currently being designed to cover the entirety of the moon up to an altitude of 200 kilometers (about 125 miles), Yew says his AI could be a backup to a rover or astronaut’s navigation capabilities when the network experiences disruptions, like power or signal outages. According to NASA, Yew’s work could even help explorers find their way during similar interferences on Earth.

“When we’re doing human expeditions, you always want [backup systems] for very dangerous missions,” says Yew. His AI is “not tied to the internet, per se, but [it] can be.” Though the AI is still only in development, Yew would like to continue making improvements by testing the system in a simulated environment before hopefully utilizing real lunar landscape data from one of the Artemis missions. 

“We want to test the robustness of the algorithm to make sure that we’re returning solutions that are global, meaning I can throw you anywhere on the moon, and you can locate anywhere,” he says. “And maybe if that’s not possible, we want to test the limits of that too.”

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In our solar system, there are worlds of ice and worlds of fire. Jupiter’s moon Io is the best example of a world of fire, freckled with volcanoes and cracked by lava spills. 

There are many competing theories to explain the workings of this fire-orb. New research published in The Planetary Science Journal and presented at the 2022 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting narrows down what could be going on inside the volcanic world using computer simulations, suggesting that it hosts a scorching ocean of magma beneath its surface. 

Magma oceans are thought to have been a common feature of rocky planets and moons earlier in the solar system, but are almost nonexistent now as things have cooled down over time. Io’s searing sea could be the only surviving example, giving scientists the opportunity to observe one up close.

“Whether a magma ocean exists or not essentially changes how Io operates, and it greatly affects the interpretations of various observations of Io,” says Caltech planetary scientist Yoshinori Miyazaki, lead author on the new research paper. 

On Earth, volcanoes are caused by our planet’s shifting tectonic plates. Io’s volcanoes arise from a very different mechanism, called tidal heating. In tidal heating, a large object—in this case, Jupiter—squishes and stretches another object near it through gravity, heating it up with friction. It’s sort of like mushing around clay with your hands until the substance becomes flexible and warm. Thanks to this geological phenomenon, Io has enough warmth to sustain its many volcanoes.

“At Io, tidal heating has run wild, generating one of the most volcanically active worlds in our solar system, with over 100 active volcanoes at any given time,” says James Tuttle Keane, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is not affiliated with the research team. “Because tidal heating is so extreme at Io, it makes it the best natural laboratory to understand this process.”

There has been long-standing debate on what resides beneath Io. Before we even saw the surface of the hellish moon, scientists speculated there may be a magma ocean raging under the rocky crust due to Io’s wild tidal heating. However, once Voyager and Galileo revealed Io’s rugged terrain, astronomers began to doubt a subterranean magma ocean could support such heavy mountains. 

Scientists then pivoted to suggest the interior is just rock with little melted bits inside. A recent hypothesis proposed the interior could be something in between pure magma and pure rock—a partially molten mass called a magmatic sponge. “Think of a magma sponge like a dish sponge or a coral sponge, where both the solids and the liquids are entirely interconnected,” explains Tuttle Keane. “This means fluids, be it soapy dishwater or magma, can flow through the sponge, but the sponge still has some structural integrity.”

[Related: We just got an up-close look at the largest lava lake in the solar system]

This new work, though, uses computer models to show the interior of Io is unlikely to be a magmatic sponge—and a magma ocean makes much more sense given the existing observations of the Galilean satellite. 

Based on reasonable assumptions about the conditions inside Io, the computer simulations predicted that a magmatic sponge would quickly separate into different layers of magma and rock, creating the magma ocean. “Melt and rock tend to separate rapidly, just like the ice and water do in a slushie if you leave it for a while,” says University of California, Santa Cruz geologist Francis Nimmo, who wasn’t involved with this study. 

Unfortunately, these models can’t definitively prove if Io does have a magma ocean. For that, we’ll need to send a probe back to the fiery little moon. 

Miyazaki is looking forward to the Juno spacecraft’s upcoming flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, where astronomers will measure a property of the moon called the Love number. This number is a proxy for how rigid or squishy the interior of a planetary body is. “If the Love number is large,” explains Miyazaki, “it will confirm the existence of a subsurface magma ocean on Io.”

Even if a magma ocean is confirmed, “there are still a lot of uncertainties associated with trying to understand Io’s interior structure,” Tuttle Keane says. “We need future missions to explore Io and the Jupiter system…many questions will remain unanswered until a dedicated Io mission is flown that can explore this volcanic moon in detail.”

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On one of the shortest and darkest days of the year, NASA’s InSight lander sent back what might be the rover’s final image. InSight is expected to lose contact with Earth any day now, as Martian dust builds up on the solar panels that power the 19-foot long planet explorer.

NASA reported that InSight did not respond to communications from Earth on December 18th and that the last time the mission was able to contact the spacecraft was on December 15. The lander may have officially reached its end of operations.

[Related: Saying goodbye to NASA’s InSight lander before it’s buried in Martian dust.]

Short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, InSight launched in May 2018 on a mission to be the first robotic lander to look deep into the interior of the Red Planet to study its crust, mantle, and core. In November 2018, it survived “seven minutes of terror” and landed on the plains of Elysium Planitia.

While on Mars, it’s listened for meteorites impacting the planet and used a seismometer to measure “marsquakes.” On that front, InSight has more than delivered, as it’s detected over 1,300 marsquakes since 2018. On December 14, scientists announced that InSight detected a 4.7 magnitude marsquake on May 4 (Sol 1222 on Mars). This quake is the largest ever recorded on the Red Planet.

“The energy released by this single marsquake is equivalent to the cumulative energy from all other Marsquakes we’ve seen so far,” John Clinton, a seismologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “Although the event was over 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) distant, the waves recorded at InSight were so large they almost saturated our seismometer.”

InSight also placed a heat probe called the “mole” into the Martian surface. Unfortunately, the heat probe was never able to get deep enough to achieve its ultimate goal.

[Related: 5 new insights about Mars from Perseverance’s rocky roving.]

Despite the mole not working as planned, InSight has sent back valuable data and crisp images back to Earth for over four years. Its powerful tools have helped scientists answer critical questions about how rocky planets both form and continue to evolve within our solar system and beyond.

The dust build up on InSight’s large, round solar arrays has limited the amount of power the rover can generate over time. It completed its primary two year mission in 2020 and NASA granted it an extension through December 2022. But only if it could make it that long, as it is generating only about 20 percent of the power it had when it landed.

“If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will — but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me,” the rover wrote on Twitter.

InSight will be survived by NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.

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It’s been a big month for Martian winds. Last week, audio recordings revealed the sounds of an actual dust devil traveling across the Red Planet’s surface. On Monday, a team of researchers released a study in Nature Astronomy detailing how some of these very same breezes could help provide energy to future human settlements at a rate far higher than previously believed.

As also reported in earlier rundowns courtesy of New Scientist and Motherboard, past assessments once deemed the winds of Mars too weak to provide a reliable, major source of power production, especially when measured against alternatives like solar and nuclear energy. This stems from the planet’s relatively thin atmosphere—just 1 percent of the density of Earth’s—which generally results in low force winds capable of moving flecks of dust and rock, but not much else. 

[Related: For the first time, humans can hear a dust devil roar across Mars.]

However, a team led by Victoria Hartwick, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, used a state-of-the-art Mars climate model adapted from a similar, Earth-focused program to factor in the planet’s landscape, dust levels, solar radiation, and heat energy. After simulating years’ worth of weather and storm patterns, the group found substantial evidence that multiple regions of Mars could provide reliable wind alongside other sources like solar panel arrays. Not only that, but certain areas could generate enough power from wind alone to keep a base up and running.

Particularly suitable locations include crater rims and volcanic highlands, while winds blowing off ice deposits during the northern hemisphere’s winter produce essentially a “sea breeze” effect on the surrounding areas that could also be harvested for energy. In certain locations, average wind power production even came in as much as 3.4 times higher than solar, according to the study. In their findings, Hartwick’s team propose the construction of 160-foot tall turbines in seasonally icy northern regions of places such as Deuteronilus Mensae and Protonilus Mensae, along with similar structures around crater edges and volcano slopes.

[Related: NASA could build a future lunar base from 3D-printed moon-dust bricks.]

Unfortunately, because of traditional turbines’ weight, the additional rocket storage bulk could pose logistical and financial barriers. As such, the group’s paper encourages additional explorations into new construction designs, such as low-volume, lightweight balloon turbines and building from materials harvested on Mars itself—a concept that is already being explored for NASA’s upcoming return to the Moon in anticipation of an eventual permanent lunar base.

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An essential part of any space mission is power. If a spacecraft runs out of energy, the communications go down, the craft becomes unsteerable, and life support systems shut off—a scenario that’s the stuff of sci-fi nightmares. 

For a spacecraft, the sun is a particularly vital supplier of energy, and the recent Artemis I mission proved just how powerful it can be to harness solar energy in space. During the nearly month-long flight around the moon, NASA tested all functions of the uncrewed spacecraft, including the Orion crew capsule’s innovative solar panels. The vehicle’s solar panels exceeded expectations, proving themselves to be a key technology for the future of human space exploration.

“Initial results show that the arrays are providing significantly more power than expected,” says Philippe Berthe, an engineer who manages the Orion European Service Module Project Project at the European Space Agency (ESA).

[Related: Welcome back to Earth, Orion]

Engineers from ESA and the European company Airbus collaborated with NASA and Lockheed Martin to build the Orion spacecraft, the component that separates from the launch rockets and will ferry astronauts to their destination and back during subsequent Artemis flights. The Paris-based agency’s main contribution to Orion is the European Service Module, which houses the solar panels and other critical systems. 

Orion has four wings, each nearly the length of a British double-decker bus, that unfolded 18 minutes into its journey while still in low-Earth orbit. Each of these wings holds three gallium arsenide solar panels, a particularly efficient and durable type of solar cell made for space. Together, the four wings generate “the equivalent of two households’” worth of power, according to Berthe. 

This type of solar cell is commonly used by military and research satellites. What’s innovative about Orion’s panels is how they’re maneuvered. “Usually solar arrays have only one axis of rotation so that they can follow the sun,” says Berthe. The ones on the capsule, however, can move in two directions, folding up to withstand the pressures of spaceflight and the heat of Orion’s powerful thrusters.

During Artemis I’s 26-day mission, the combined NASA and ESA team tested all aspects of the solar panels, including their ability to rotate, unfold, and produce power. According to Berthe, the panels worked so well they provided 15 percent more power than what engineers had projected. That has consequences for future Artemis missions: “Either the size of the solar arrays could be reduced,” he says, “or they could provide more power to Orion.” Smaller solar arrays could reduce the cost of missions, but more power could allow for additional capabilities onboard the crewed spacecraft.

These nimble solar panels are also equipped with cameras on their wingtips, which Matthias Gronowski, Airbus Chief Engineer for the European Service Module, likens to a “selfie stick” for the mission. These cameras have provided incredible images of the spacecraft as it cruised between the moon and Earth, and can even help the mission engineers inspect the spacecraft for damage. Because the arrays are maneuverable, they act like robotic arms, providing a “chance to inspect the whole vehicle,” says Gronowski.

[Related: These powerful solar panels are as thin as human hair]

Artemis I is NASA’s first step in testing the technology needed to return humans to the moon, and eventually venture further to Mars using the Orion crew capsule. The new lunar program plans to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station resides, for the first time since the 1970s, including the first woman and first person of color to set foot on the moon.

The solar panels are one part of the pioneering technology of Artemis and Orion, and this first test flight proves they are a reliable technology for distant space travel. Moveable arrays like those on Artemis I will be key for future missions that require even more powerful engines, allowing the panels to shift into a protective configuration as the spacecraft speeds up. 

“We are very proud to be part of the program,” says Gronowski. “And we are very proud to be basically bringing humans back to the moon.”

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If a cloud of dust swoops through Mars and no astronaut (or Martian) is around to hear it, does it even make a sound?

The answer is yes, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Communications. An international team of scientists used a microphone on NASA’s Perseverance rover to pick up the first-ever audio recording of an extraterrestrial whirlwind.

“We can learn a lot more using sound than we can with some of the other tools,” said Roger Wiens, a professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences in Purdue University and co-author, in a statement. “They take readings at regular intervals. The microphone lets us sample, not quite at the speed of sound, but nearly 100,000 times a second. It helps us get a stronger sense of what Mars is like.”

[Related: Saying goodbye to NASA’s InSight lander before it’s buried in Martian dust.]

Weins is the principal investigator of Perseverance’s SuperCam, a suite of tools that make up the rover’s “head.” It includes advanced remote-sensing instruments, spectrometers, cameras, and the microphone. On this study, he worked with corresponding author and planetary scientist Naomi Murdoch, a team of researchers at the National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space ,and NASA.

Perseverance’s microphone is not running continuously, but records roughly three minutes per day every few days. Getting the recording of the whirlwind was lucky, but not necessarily unexpected according to the team. They have observed evidence of about 100 dust devils in the Jezero Crater since February 2021, when Perseverance first landed in Jezero.

These dust devils are tiny tornadoes of dust and grit and are common on Mars. They are a sign of disturbances in the atmosphere and are an an important lifting mechanism for the Martian dust cycle. Impacts from dust grain build up is associated with degradation of the hardware on Martian rovers, so improving our understanding of how dust lifting works on the Red Planet will be helpful in future space exploration.

This recording happened because it was the first time the microphone was switched on when a dust devil passed over Perseverance. When recordings like this one are taken along side time-lapse photography and air pressure readings, it can help scientists better understand the weather and atmosphere on Mars. Analysis of the data from Perseverance’s multiple sensors and modeling suggests that the dust devil in the recording stood at over 387 feet tall.

“We could watch the pressure drop, listen to the wind, then have a little bit of silence that is the eye of the tiny storm, and then hear the wind again and watch the pressure rise,” said Wiens. “The wind is fast—about 25 miles per hour, but about what you would see in a dust devil on Earth. The difference is that the air pressure on Mars is so much lower that the winds, while just as fast, push with about 1 percent of the pressure the same speed of wind would have back on Earth. It’s not a powerful wind, but clearly enough to loft particles of grit into the air to make a dust devil.”

[Related: Happy Mars-iversary, Perseverance.]

Future astronauts exploring Mars necessarily won’t have to worry about gale-force winds taking down habitats or communications antennas and the Martian wind may even have some benefits. The team speculates that the breezes that blow dust and grit off the rover’s solar panels may help them last longer. Mars’ InSight lander is in its final days after over four years of exploration, since it is losing power in its solar panels due to dust build up.

“Those rover teams would see a slow decline in power over a number of days to weeks, then a jump. That was when wind cleared off the solar panels,” said Wiens.

Additionally, the lack of such wind and dust devils in the Elysium Planitia where InSight landed may help explain why that mission is winding down.

“Just like Earth, there is different weather in different areas on Mars,” said Wiens. “Using all of our instruments and tools, especially the microphone, helps us get a concrete sense of what it would be like to be on Mars.”

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This story has been updated.

The space industry has blossomed in recent years, with commercial rocket launches sending more craft than ever into orbit. But for private companies to explore destinations beyond Earth, which could catapult the space business into its golden age, a major step is underway: A privately funded lander is headed to the moon to attempt the first commercial soft landing on the lunar surface.

The Tokyo-based Japanese space exploration company ispace built the small, hot-tub-sized lander destined for Earth’s satellite. Though it was originally targeted to fly earlier in November, the craft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on December 11 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. 

“The most important point is that our mission is not just a lunar landing,” says Jumpei Nozaki, director and chief financial officer at ispace. The eventual goal, the company says, is to create a cislunar economy, or commerce and economic growth that revolves around human space activities on the moon or in Earth’s orbit. 

But before all that, the company needs to touch down on the moon. The M1 lander, part of ispace’s Hakuto-R program, will be the company’s first foray into lunar exploration, essentially acting as a demonstration mission to validate both the lander’s design and its technology. Google’s Lunar X Prize competition, which ran from 2007 to 2018 and was designed to spur affordable access to the moon, in part kicked off ispace’s interest in getting there. Although the competition ended without a team securing the $30 million dollar prize, it succeeded in inspiring many new spacecraft concepts, ispace’s lander included.

Coming in at a dry weight of just under 800 pounds, the craft will carry multiple commercial and government payloads with it along its journey, including the United Arab Emirates’ first lunar rover, Rashid, as well as a baseball-sized lunar robot from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), and a music disc containing a song by a Japanese rock band, Sakanaction. 

[Related: NASA could build a future lunar base from 3D-printed moon-dust bricks]

For all the build-up in getting there, neither robotic mission will be especially long-lived. Rashid, which was built by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in Dubai, will spend one lunar day (equal to about 14 Earth days) studying the lunar surface, its mobility on the moon’s surface, and how different surfaces interact with lunar particles. Japan’s ultra-lightweight robot, meanwhile, will spend only hours collecting data about the surface, which future missions will use to develop autonomous driving and cruising technology. 

It will take M1 about three to five months to reach the surface of the moon, where the craft will touch down at the Atlas Crater. The crater is a prominent impact site located on the southeastern outer edge of Mare Frigoris, a place astronomers have dubbed the “Sea of Cold.” The company noted in a press release that it chose this site for features that include continuous sun-illumination and communication visibility from Earth. Though there are alternative landing sites in place depending on what may happen to the craft during transit, the current site meets the technical requirements of the demonstration mission as well as the scientific exploration objectives of its mission customers. The craft is expected to land there sometime around the end of April 2023. 

To date, only the US, Russia, and China have landed spacecraft on the moon, but as interest in space dominance heightens, countries and space agencies all over the globe are turning their eyes toward the stars. If ispace is successful, its landing will mark a major milestone in the history of commercial spaceflight, considering that it could be the first private mission to ever make a soft landing on the moon. According to Atsushi Saiki, chief revenue officer at ispace, the company hopes to lay the groundwork to create high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the moon, eventually working their way up to two or three commercial missions per year after 2025. 

[Related: Is it finally time for a permanent base on the moon?]

Other nations, meanwhile, are spearheading lunar projects themselves. While NASA currently has plans to turn the moon into a bustling base for deep-space missions and other unearthly activities, countries such as Canada, South Korea, and even Turkey have announced initiatives to begin fast-tracking their own lunar exploration efforts. 

Nozaki believes that international cooperation between public agencies and private companies is key to fostering a world where people of all nationalities can work together to achieve an ideal space-faring experience. 

“In the next 10 years, 20 years, a private company needs to take some role to enhance what space [agencies have] done,” he says. “We can support the space agencies together in developing this space world, this is what we are very proud [of].”

Going forward, the company plans to take the lessons it learns from this first experience and apply them to future missions. Plans for a second and third mission are already in development, with M2 scheduled to launch sometime in 2024, and further expeditions launching with increasing frequency soon after. 

“We want to have a new page in the space history book,” says Saiki. “We need support from everybody, every single person on the Earth regardless of [their] nationality or race to support us to really achieve our vision in the long term.”

Correction (December 15, 2022): The story has been updated to specify that Hakuto-R would be the first soft landing by a commercial lander on the moon. In 2019, Israel’s commercial spacecraft Beresheet crashed into the lunar landscape.

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Today, at 12:40 PM EST the Orion spacecraft made its grand entrance back on Earth after an unofficial time of 25 days 10 hours 54 minutes 50 seconds in space. It covered 1.4 million miles through space, orbited the moon, and collected crucial data along the way. Orion safely landed in the Pacific Ocean, off the Baja coast near Guadalupe Island, around 300 miles south of San Diego where the landing was originally planned.

Orion entered the Earth’s atmosphere traveling at about 25,000 miles per hour, before its reentry and its parachutes brought the spacecraft down to roughly 20 mph before splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion performed its crucial crew module separation at 12:00 pm EST and began the crucial entry interface stage at 12:20 pm EST. Entry interface was described as the “moment of truth,” for Orion, where the spacecraft’s important heat shield felt the effects of temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion also experienced two expected blackout periods during entry interface when NASA lost communication with the spacecraft for a few minutes.

According to NASA aerospace engineer Koki Machin, Orion’s 11 parachutes are very similar to the ones that accompanied the Apollo missions, with the larger size of Orion’s parachutes being the primary difference. Orion’s parachutes are called hybrid parachutes and they are made of both nylon and kevlar. Kevlar is an extremely strong aramid fiber that is used to make bulletproof vests.

A recovery team comprised of NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems engineers and technicians and Navy divers and sailors from the USS Portland arrived in San Diego, California, just after Thanksgiving to rehearse recovering the space capsule.

The team practiced off the California coast by reeling in a mock capsule and loading it onto the ship. The USS Portland is an amphibious vessel and has both a flight deck and a well deck that leads to the ocean.

“The mission that we’re doing is kind of amphibious in nature; it’s just … normally were recovering marine vehicles or hovercraft, instead of doing that, we’re just grabbing the orbital,” USS Portland Captain John Ryan told NBC 7 San Diego.

Since Orion doesn’t have any crew members onboard (except for its “moonikins“), the team had a roughly six hour long window to retrieve the capsule.

In a press conference on December 5, Orion Deputy Program Manager Debbie Korth said, “We’re really pushing the envelope with this spacecraft to see what we can get out of performance,” referring to longer burn times for the spacecraft’s engines (from 17 seconds to 100 seconds) and thermal response from solar arrays.

Orion will return to Kennedy Space Center later this month, where NASA will remove the vehicle’s accelerometers, mannequins, dosimeters, and microphones for further study.

The Artemis I Mission launched on November 16 and is the first integrated test of NASA’s latest deep space exploration technology: the Orion spacecraft itself, the all-powerful Space Launch System rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. It is the first of three missions, and will provide NASA with more critical information on non-Earth environments, the health impacts of space travel, and more for further research around the solar system. It also showcases the agency’s commitment and capability to return astronauts to the moon.

[Related: Orion will air kiss the moon today during important Artemis exercise.]

Artemis I and II will also pave the way to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon as early as 2025 as part of Artemis III. “When we talk about sustained exploration on the lunar surface and getting onto Mars, Artemis I is that step,” James Free, associate of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development, said in August. “Our next step beyond this is Artemis II, we’re putting a crew on it.”

According to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the ambitious goal of advancing human space travel to reach Mars will come after Artemis III. NASA hopes to establish a base on the moon and send astronauts to the Red Planet by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

“It is one that marks new technology,” Nelson said about Orion and the Artemis I mission on Sunday following the splash down, “a whole new breed to astronaut, a vision for the future that captures the DNA of particularly Americans, although we do this as an international venture, and that DNA is we are adventurers, we are explorers, we always have a frontier. And that frontier now is to continue exploring the heavens.”

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It’s been half a century since humans last orbited the moon, but SpaceX plans to return next year. The first private, all-civilian lunar loop was first announced in 2018 by Elon Musk and Japanese multibillionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who reportedly bought every seat on an upcoming flight aboard SpaceX’s still-in-development Starship shuttle. Maezawa subsequently put out an open call last year for potential travel mates from around the world, and has just released his official flight roster.

As announced, the eight passengers (who all have multi-role bios on the dearMoon Crew site) will include rapper Choi Seung Hyun, aka T.O.P from the South Korean boy band BIGBANG, DJ Steve Aoki, photographer and host of the popular space-themed YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut Tim Dodd. Two Earth-minded filmmakers, Brendan Hall and Karim Iliya, artist Rhiannon Adam, actor Dev D. Joshi, and designer and non-profit founder Yemi A.D. round out the final eight guests. The voyage’s two alternates are Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington and the dancer Miyu.

[Related: Meet SpaceX’s first moon tourist, Yusaku Maezawa.]

Maezawa’s project, dubbed dearMoon, is billed as a six-day circumlunar sojourn meant to inspire its passengers’ respective artwork and careers to create art in their respective fields. Maezawa claims his open application received over 1 million entries from “249 countries and regions.”

While a first on many fronts, this actually won’t be Maezawa’s introduction to space. Last year, he rocketed up to the ISS for a 12-day visit, which he documented in a series of YouTube videos. And it’s not the only time an all-citizen team has taken to space, as a four-man all-civilian crew orbited Earth in another SpaceX mission last year.

[Related: With Artemis 1 launched, NASA is officially on its way back to the moon.]

The SpaceX/dearMoon trip is tentatively scheduled to launch sometime next year aboard the private spacefaring company’s massive, 165-foot-tall Starship rocket, which Musk intends to one day utilize for his overarching goal of reaching Mars. Although Starship has not flown since May 2021, SpaceX hopes to conduct a test later this month ahead of next year’s slated dearMoon excursion. NASA is also relying on Starship for its own lunar plans, and intends to use it to reach the moon’s south pole as part of its ongoing Artemis project sometime in 2025 or 2026.

Of course, take all those dates with a grain of moon dust. Musk’s timelines are well-known for their optimism.

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The sun roils with heat as thermonuclear reactions in its center produce high amounts of energy. Day to day, that energy is responsible for making Earth livable. But sometimes, solar flares can burst forth, sending highly energetic particles hurtling at top speeds into space. If our planet is in the radiation’s path, it can wreak havoc on our lives. 

[Related: What happens when the sun burns out?]

Although such consequences are rare, satellites and technology that relies on electricity and wireless networks are particularly vulnerable. In 1989, a geomagnetic storm set off by a powerful solar flare triggered a major blackout across Canada that left six million people without electricity for nine hours. In 2000, a solar eruption caused some satellites to short-circuit and led to radio blackout. In 2003, a series of solar eruptions caused power outages and disrupted air travel and satellite systems. And in February 2022, a geomagnetic storm destroyed at least 40 Starlink satellites just as they were being deployed, costing SpaceX more than $50 million.

What exactly are solar flares and solar storms?

Generally speaking, the term “solar storm” describes when an intense eruption of energy from the sun shoots into space and interacts with Earth. Charged particles constantly flow away from the sun into space in what is called the solar wind. But more significant eruptions can originate as solar flares, often from temporarily dark patches called sunspots, and intense explosions called coronal mass ejections. Any kind of variation in this activity can cause auroras. 

Solar flares are essentially flashes of light. They happen when strong solar magnetic fields protruding from the surface of the sun snap, releasing immense amounts of electromagnetic radiation at extremely high speeds. When that radiation slams into Earth, it injects energy into our planet’s ionosphere, the uppermost reaches of our atmosphere, explains Guhathakurta. The extreme ultraviolet radiation from the sun can polarize the particles in Earth’s ionosphere, she says, which can have cascading effects on any other charged particles in the vicinity—meaning anything that uses electricity is at risk.

And solar flares travel at the speed of light, says Jesse Woodroffe, who leads the space weather research program in NASA’s Heliophysics Division. That makes them difficult to anticipate and prepare for. “There is no way to get a signal to Earth faster than the solar flares, which are already traveling at the speed of light,” he notes. “So you have to predict the flare itself is going to happen. And that is a challenging science problem that we have not yet cracked.”

While solar flares are intense bursts of radiation, coronal mass ejections are explosions of energy particles. As such, they travel a bit slower. They occur when large portions of the outer atmosphere of the sun (the corona) explodes, sending superheated gas out into space. These “big blobs of solar material are ejected out at a very high speed, hundreds and hundreds of kilometers per second, but it is much slower than the speed of light,” Woodroffe adds. Those can take anywhere from half a day to three days to reach Earth, he says.

How to forecast space weather

Forecasting space weather isn’t quite like terrestrial weather forecasts. The big difference: On Earth, meteorologists have millions of measurements they can make and integrate into their predictive models. In space, Woodroffe says, there are just a few places scientists can put instruments to observe solar activity.

NASA shares the data from its solar observatories with the National Oceanic at Atmospheric Administration, which provides a probabilistic forecast of geomagnetic storm warnings and watches based on likelihood and geomagnetic intensity. Depending on how fast a solar storm is moving, they can send out warnings a few days before that space weather touches Earth, or just a couple of hours.

The ultimate goal, Woodroffe says, is to improve space weather forecasting to be on par with hurricane forecasting. His Earth-focused colleagues can predict where a hurricane might go by running different models, producing a range of outcomes within a high range of confidence, he says. “We are developing those sorts of capabilities for space weather.”

Are we seeing more solar flares?

So, back to those apocalyptic solar flare headlines. Is the sun really getting feistier and threatening the collapse of modern society each week? 

Space weather activity hasn’t changed recently, says Guhathakurta—but humanity has. In the past century, people have become increasingly reliant on electronics, and anything with an “on and off switch is vulnerable to solar storms,” she says. 

[Related: Make your own weather station with recycled materials]

When those energy particles come surging from the sun to Earth, the disturbance they cause in our planet’s magnetic field “creates electromagnetic fluctuation and voltage fluctuation, which can penetrate beneath the ground and create fluctuations on our electric power grid,” Guhathakurta says. And with growing dependence on devices that rely on orbiting satellite systems like GPS, our electronics are even more exposed to bursts of solar radiation.

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The days are growing shorter in the northern hemisphere, which may not be the best for productive afternoons, but the extra darkness means some more time for looking up at the night sky. December ushers in winter for the northern half of the globe, which is a prime season for stargazing due to the added darkness and the cold air being less hazy than warmer, humid summer air.

Here are some celestial events to keep your eye on while closing out 2022.

December 7-Full cold moon

The last full moon of the year will reach its peak illumination at 11:08 pm EST on December 7. The Old Farmer’s Almanac recommends looking for it just before sunset as the moon begins to peek above the horizon. December’s full moon will will also be above the horizon for longer than most full moons, due to its higher trajectory in the sky.

December’s full moon is called the Cold Moon, or the “time of cold” moon, a Mohawk name that evokes when winter’s chill really grips the northern hemisphere. Some other names for the last full moon of the year are the Snow Moon (Eastern Band of Cherokees), the It’s a Long Night Moon (Oneida), and the Winter Maker Moon (Abenaki).

December 7-Mars at opposition

The same night as the last full moon of 2022, Mars will be in its brightest opposition. According to NASA, Mars and the sun are on directly opposite sides of Earth during opposition. From Earth, Mars rises in the east just as the sun sets in the west, and after staying up in the sky all night, Mars sets in the west just as the sun rises in the east. Astronomers say Mars is in “opposition” because the Red Planet and the sun appear on opposite sides of the sky. If Earth and Mars followed perfectly circular orbits instead of more oval shaped elliptical orbits, opposition would be as close as the two planets could get.

For the best chance to see the Red Planet in all its glory, face east about an hour after dark. Mars will look like reddish-orange star that will rise and appear more to the south as the evening wears on. By midnight, the planet will be high in the south.

In 2018, Mars was the brightest it had been in 15 years and in 2020, the Red Planet was at about 36.8 million miles away from Earth during a close approach.

December 13 and 14-Geminid meteor shower peaks

If shooting stars are more your thing, you won’t want to miss the Geminid meteor shower. It is one of the most reliable meteor showers every year and stargazers can see up to 120 meteors per hour at the shower’s peak if watching from a dark location, with an average of 75 space rocks per hour. The stellar show typically begins as early as 9 pm and peaks around 2 am.

[Related: How to photograph a meteor shower.]

This year, the Geminids will be competing with a bright waning gibbous moon, which might make it more difficult to see the shooting stars due to the extra light in the sky. The Old Farmer’s Almanac recommends trying to face away from the Moon to keep its shine out of your field of view.

On the evening of December 13, the moon will illuminate the sky from late evening on, but it will rise a little bit later on December 14.

December 21-Winter solstice (Northern Hemisphere)

Winter will officially begin on December 21, with the astronomical solstice and the shortest day of the year. The solstice officially occurs at 4:48 pm EST and is the day with the fewest hours of sunlight. After the winter solstice, the days will slowly grow longer as Earth inches towards the summer solstice in June.

Since the Earth is tilted on its axis, on the solstice, one half of planet is pointed away from the sun and the other half is pointed towards it. The solstice technically only lasts a moment, when a hemisphere-in this case, the northern-is tilted as far away from the sun as it can be.

[Related: Why we turn stars into constellations.]

The winter solstice is celebrated by cultures around the world with festivals, parties, and feasting due to its symbolism of light triumphing over darkness.

December 21 and 22-Ursid meteor shower peaks

In case you have to miss Geminid earlier in the month or the moonlight interferes with it too much, the Ursid meteor shower is predicted to peak on December 21 and early in the morning on December 22. Since the moon will be a faint waning crescent moon (only 3 percent illumination) it likely won’t interfere with this year’s Ursids in 2022.

Ursids can produce many as five to 10 meteors per hour, with a dark sky and little to no moonlight. Although, bursts of 100 or more meteors per hour have been observed.

December 21 and 24-Mercury at its greatest elongation and dichotomy

This will be the planet Mercury’s fourth evening apparition of the year. Its greatest elongation occurs when the planet appears to be farthest from the sun. Stargazers can even start looking for Mercury in the evening sky beginning in the second week of December. Mercury, the smallest planet in our solar system, can best be seen looking towards sunset as soon as the sky begins to darken. It will reach its greatest elongation on December 21 and will be 5 degrees away from Venus that night.

On December 24, Mercury will reach dichotomy, or an intermediate half phase, at about the same time that that it appears furthest from the sun. The exact times of the two events may differ by a few days, only because Mercury’s orbit is not quite perfectly aligned with the ecliptic.

The same rules apply to watch this meteor shower and lunar eclipse apply to pretty much all space-watching fun: go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. Happy stargazing!

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At the heart of nearly all of NASA’’s complex space missions is an unseen quartermaster, a key system often referred to as the agency’s “eyes”: the Deep Space Network.

The largest and most sensitive telecommunications system on the planet, the Deep Space Network, or DSN, is an international array of giant radio antennas. The network is made up of three ground-based facilities around the world, each located 120 degrees apart in longitude (or between 5,000 and 10,000 miles away) from each other, with one based at Goldstone near Barstow, California, another in Madrid, Spain, and the last in Canberra, Australia). This powerful network allows NASA to remain in constant communication with spacecraft that venture far beyond Earth’s orbit. 

[Related: NASA is testing space lasers to shoot data back to Earth]

Operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, the system has played a crucial role in deep space communications since it began continuous operation in 1963. In its youth, the network was an important part of tracking and communicating with the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, and has since contributed to the well-being of dozens of NASA’s most historic projects. For instance, it helped transmit data back and forth from missions like DART, Lucy, the Solar Parker Probe, and the James Webb Space Telescope. As of 2021, the DSN tracks and supports 39 missions regularly, with another 30 more NASA missions in development.  

Jeff Berner, the Deep Space Network’s chief engineer, says that the network still even tracks NASA’s Voyager probes—the twin crafts that launched in 1977 and continue to float far outside the solar system. “As spacecrafts get further away, the power received from a spacecraft goes down,” he says. “So the signal gets weaker and weaker as the spacecraft gets further and further away.” 

For perspective, sending and receiving data to the moon and back (an average of 477,710 miles) would take only a few seconds, but the same signal sent to Mars (about 280 million miles round-trip) could take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to arrive. For a craft as far out of humanity’s range as Voyager, Berner says a signal’s two-way light time (the time it takes to get to the craft and back to Earth) could take upwards of 29 hours. Additionally, because any mission can be tracked using any of the DSN’s powerful antennas, the easy flexibility of this complex relay network is one of the reasons why the DSN is “truly a multi-mission system,” Berner explains. Each complex is home to a 230-foot-wide antenna and numerous 111-feet-wide ones that, besides communicating with spacecraft as Earth rotates, are also used to conduct radio science, like studying planets and black holes. But a close look at the inner-workings of this system reveals how integral the DSN will be to NASA’s latest push to reach the lunar surface with the Artemis program.

Getting Artemis I to the moon and back

Last week, NASA’s Orion spacecraft kissed the moon, and is now shuffling along right behind our satellite, covertly taking jaw-dropping new high-definition images of its crater-dotted surface. But if Orion is Earth’s latest spy, then the DSN is essentially mission control, the voice in every good hero’s ear. 

According to the JPL, the DSN is currently supporting a large, constant influx of data from the uncrewed capsule, a process which will continue throughout its outbound journey, the mission maneuvers in between, as well as the craft’s much-awaited return. The process will ensure commands can be sent and data can be swiftly returned, even while deftly supporting the many other missions the network tracks. Artemis initially relied on NASA’s Near Space Network (NSN), another relay communications system managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that can connect with government or commercial missions in near-Earth orbit. But because its antennas aren’t able to get enough energy to support high data rates, or the rapid transmission of data to ground stations once a spacecraft goes beyond low-Earth orbit, the DSN became a better fit for Artemis to go the distance. Without the existence of the DSN, “you would not be able to get the data rates that they are getting for the moon,” Berner says. That means that all of those fantastic photos and images the craft has already sent back would certainly be less precise, and surely, more dull. 

Just before Orion is slated to splash down back on Earth, the DSN will pass the baton back to the NSN once more. This handoff marks a new chapter of human space exploration—together with the Space Communications and Navigation program, the telecommunications systems will lay the groundwork for future crewed Artemis launches to the moon. 

A space network for the future

To keep up with NASA’s jam-packed mission schedule, the nearly 60-year-old network will need a few upgrades. “We’ve got equipment that’s been in the network for 30, 40 years that, needless to say, is very hard to maintain,” says Berner, who was present when the DSN first began converting its analog systems to digital in the early 1990s. But bringing the DSN up-to-date with the latest technology “takes time and money.” 

Berner says there are a number of improvements the network will undergo in the next few years to ensure it has the capability to support new missions, specifically NASA’s Gateway, an outpost that will orbit the moon and provide support for long-term human lunar and deep space exploration. Because many of those future systems will be using higher data rates at higher frequencies than previous missions, antennas at each DSN complex are being upgraded to support much higher data rates at uplink and downlink, or transmissions to and from a craft. 

[Related: NASA is launching a new quantum entanglement experiment in space]

But as humanity once again seeks to plant its flag on the moon (hopefully more permanently this time), Berner notes that the success of a spacecraft mission often depends on the ground-based tracking system that supports them, a concept that can sometimes get lost in the mix and pushed to the shadows in celebration of new discoveries. Ultimately, behind every far-reaching, data-hungry spacecraft is a harmony of capable antennas enabling it to go further. 

“When you see the pictures in the newspaper about the discoveries, [if] we didn’t have the network’s on the ground, you wouldn’t see any of this stuff,” Berner says. 

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While Americans were busy basting their Thanksgiving turkeys or making a list of the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, NASA’s Orion spacecraft was orbiting the moon and taking some images. NASA released the beautifully detailed images on the sixth day of Orion’s 25.5-day journey and they show moon’s mysterious surface and its craters frozen in time.

When asteroids and other space rocks hit the lunar surface, the collision forms an impact crater remains intact for billions of years. The moon doesn’t have weather like rain or wind or storms that can cover up the hole left behind, so the holes just stay on there. NASA believes that some of the moon’s craters have water and ice, which will be a necessary resource in the deep space missions planned over the next several years. Some of the images even have craters within craters like a bull’s-eye on an archery target.

[Related: Why it’s hard to tell if moon craters are holes or bumps.]

The images were captured about 80 miles above the surface of the moon with Orion’s onboard optical navigation camera. It is one of 16 cameras onboard the spacecraft and it does more than just snap these incredible images. It helps Orion with navigation, by taking images of both the Moon and the Earth at various phases and distances. According to NASA, the optical navigation camera images will provide an “enhanced body of data to certify its effectiveness under different lighting conditions as a way to help orient the spacecraft on future missions with crew.”

The Moon was formed more than 4 billion years ago, when a Mars-sized object collided with Earth. It is estimated that roughy 225 new impact craters are formed on the lunar surface about every seven years.

[Related: With Artemis 1 launched, NASA is officially on its way back to the moon.]

After blasting into space on November 16, the Orion spacecraft’s journey will cover about 1.3 million space miles and will fly farther than any other spacecraft built for humans. The capsule is scheduled to splash back down on Earth at the end of its mission on Sunday, December 11.

Artemis I is the first integrated test of NASA’s latest deep space exploration technology: Orion, the all-powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. It is the first of three missions, and will provide NASA with more critical information on non-Earth environments, the health impacts of space travel, and more for further research around the solar system. It also showcases the agency’s commitment and capability to return astronauts to the moon.

You can track Orion during its mission around the Moon and back in real time and view a live stream from Orion’s cameras.

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In February 2021, the Perseverance rover reached a crater that was once a river delta on Mars. The 10 foot-long rover with seven instruments on board is currently exploring the Jezero crater, on a mission that partially includes gathering samples that may hold signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. It is the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith, the loose unconsolidated rock, glass, and mineral fragments in the soil. It will also pave the way for human exploration of Mars, but first we need to more about Martian geology, its past climate, and the planet’s chemistry.

In a study published today in the journal Science, a team of scientists from around the world present evidence of past chemical reactions between liquid water and carbon-compounds on Mars.

“We believe we have found these kinds of liquid water environments and organic compounds together. That’s sort of the limit to how we can describe what we call habitability,” Eva Linghan Scheller, the study’s first author and a post-doctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), tells PopSci.

[Related: NASA’s Perseverance rover is on a hunt for microbes on Mars.]

The team used NASA’s Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument to conduct deep ultraviolet Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy of three rocks within the crater. The Raman spectrometer and is designed to look for the signs of liquid water and organic compounds. The testing detected evidence of these chemical reactions which in turn provides evidence of aquatic environments that used to exist on Mars. The sulfate-perchlorate mixture found in the rocks, likely formed by later changes to the rocks by brine.

“In the study, we talk a lot about the liquid water interaction with igneous rocks, which are basically crystallized magma,” Scheller adds. “What was most surprising about that was the really weird chemistry of some of the evidence that we have from these liquid water environments, which are sodium chloride sulfate mixtures.”

NASA first found carbon-based, or organic, matter on Mars in 2014, but this discovery explains the percholorate (a combination of chlorine and oxygen) that formed as a briny water that percolated through red Martian rock.

“What’s really interesting is that materials like these are extremely soluble. If they get into contact with any liquid water, they will basically dissolve,” Scheller explains. “So the last stage that the rock was in contact with liquid water was a last gasp of water on Mars.”

[Related: Happy Mars-iversary, Perseverance.]

To get an idea of when this last gasp of Water on Mars occurred, scientists will have to examine samples in the lab. Martian rock samples are due to arrive on Earth sometime in 2033 according to NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Perseverance is exploring the Jezero Crater because it is believed to have the best chance for providing solid samples. About 3.5 billion years ago, the Jezero Crater was home to an ancient delta, or a fan-shaped area once at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is looking at the delta’s sedimentary rocks, which formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery river. The rover explored the floor of the crater during its first science campaign, in 2021, and found igneous rock which form deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the planet’s surface.

Going forward, one thing is certrain. Studying the rocks for the secrets of Mars’ colorful past will be keeping scientists busy.

“All the different missions have actually found this extremely weird chemical chlorides all over the Martian surface,” says Scheller. “There’s going to be a big mystery that people are going to be digging into, in the next decade or so.”

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The Orion spacecraft is set to make its closest approach to the moon today, passing behind the orb for a little more than 30 minutes before skimming 80 or so miles above its surface. The flyby will take place at 7:44 am EST, and can be viewed over the NASA Artemis I stream.

Flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston had a busy weekend maneuvering Orion between Earth and its satellite. The team performed three trajectory correction burns with thrusters to nudge the capsule into the perfect spot and speed for the Artemis I mission’s milepost. As a result, the vehicle moved into “the lunar sphere of influence,” or more simply put, the moon’s gravitational field.

But the work doesn’t end there. The flyby will require precision in both navigation and propulsion to get maximum assistance from the moon’s gravity (which is only about a sixth as powerful as Earth’s). To enter the optimal elliptical pathway, Orion will use its main engine to push away from the celestial body and essentially, slingshot around it. The spacecraft is currently traveling at 547 miles per hour, though its velocity will change dramatically as lunar forces take over.

[Related: Have we been measuring gravity wrong this whole time?]

At 80 miles from the moon, Orion will snap images of its vantage point with its 16 onboard cameras. Other missions have made closer contact: The US, former Soviet Union, and China have combined for 21 successful lunar landings since the 1960s. But it’s important to remember that Artemis I is forging a path, somewhat literally, to exploring new regions of the moon. It will help NASA scientists finetune their measurements and procedures for sending more space systems, and one day, astronauts, to the satellite’s south pole.

Orion’s route over the next 19 days involves maximum coasting. One of the mission’s objectives is to see how well the capsule will fare in distant retrograde orbit, or DRO. This high-altitude, clockwise movement will bring the spacecraft around the moon 1.5 times—with minimum fuel use. Orion is already loaded with four first-of-their-kind solar arrays, which have been producing enough electricity to run two average-sized US homes. DRO, however, will let it cut down power use and save the energy for instruments and additional trajectory burns.

On the opposite end of its travels, the capsule will edge 40,000 miles past the far side of the moon, which is the farthest any habitable vehicle has gone in space. At that point of the orbit, it will be close to 300,000 miles away from Earth. Orion should hit that milepost in early December, and then start making its circuitous way back home.

Watch this morning’s action here:

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On a chilly February night in 2021, Winchcombe, a garden-girdled market town nestled in the gentle hills of southwest England, lit up with a fireball and a sonic boom as a meteorite streaked across the sky.

Astronomers knew, instantly, the value of the rock they had just been granted. They got the word out quickly. In the following days, locals and scientists alike combed through hedges, fields, and driveways, collecting more than a pound of extraterrestrial fragments in all.

[Related: Hunt for meteorites in your own yard]

Experts had good reason to be excited about this particular fireball, which, as it turns out, is far more ancient than Winchcombe’s 15th-century castle. This meteorite was a 4.5-billion-year-old relic from the very first days of the solar system. Studying debris like these can help researchers understand what was happening as the planets were still forming, including how much water might have once coated a world like Mars.

“The Winchcombe meteorite contains all the ingredients—water and organic molecules—that are needed to kickstart oceans and life on Earth,” says Ashley King, an earth scientist at the Natural History Museum in London. He was one of dozens of scientists to publish their findings on the Winchcombe meteorite in the journal Science Advances today.

The British rubble provides an example of what astronomers call a carbonaceous chondrite. These rocks really are old as time: They likely formed at the dawn of the solar system, in its outer reaches, before eventually falling closer to the inner planets.

Carbonaceous chondrites have a much higher carbon content than most of their fellow space rocks. They’re also spiced with a healthy pinch of what astronomers call volatiles: substances like methane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and, yes, water, all of which are frozen in space but can readily turn into gas under the heat of the inner solar system.

Carbonaceous chondrites don’t often come to Earth; they account for a tiny fraction of the thousands of meteorites that are collected for study on our planet. One plummeted to the ground in Denmark in 2009; another crashed in California in 2012. Those two examples seem to have followed similar arcs as the Winchcombe rock, potentially hinting that they all may share an origin story.

To find material from rocks that old, astronomers often have to send couriers off-world. Hayabusa2, a spacecraft launched from Japan in 2014, returned to Earth six years later with samples from 162173 Ryugu, a near-Earth asteroid. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, launched in 2016, is set to return in 2023 with similar samples from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu. Both asteroids are suspected chondrites.

The Winchcombe rock saved space agencies the trouble by coming to Earth instead. More than that, because locals caught the meteorite’s course with their doorbell cameras and dashcams, astronomers had no trouble reconstructing the rock’s arc through the atmosphere.

“Since we know the pre-atmospheric orbit of the original rock and the meteorite was recovered only hours after landing, it’s been a little bit like having our own ‘natural’ sample return mission from an asteroid,” says King.

Because the fragments came from a known environment, astronomers could also confidently determine which bits came from the meteorite and which came from, say, a driveway. The pieces were also retrieved within days, which meant any contamination was kept to a minimum. “The Winchcombe [rock] is pristine, unmodified by the terrestrial environment, and gives us a chance to look back through time,” says King.

“We were able to make a really exciting measurement of the composition of the water in Winchcombe and know it was 100 percent extraterrestrial,” says Luke Daly, an earth scientist at Glasgow University in Scotland and one of King’s co-authors.

The scientists did just find water in their time capsule—they also detected carbon- and oxygen-containing compounds, including amino acids, the building blocks of life on Earth.

[Related: Meteorites older than the solar system contain key ingredients for life]

Although Winchombe’s rock is a rarity on Earth, the early solar system would have been teeming with debris like this. In many ways, they’re the leftovers: material that didn’t get eaten by growing little planets. Back then, carbonaceous chondrite after carbonaceous chondrite would have encroached on the inner planets and battered their surfaces. So, it’s possible that rocks like Winchcombe might have helped deliver water and amino acids right to Earth, along with Mercury, Venus, and Mars. That raises another question: How much life-giving substance did they carry?

To answer that, a group of researchers from France and Denmark examined a very different sort of meteorite: fragments of Mars, broken off and cast away until they fell to Earth. There are about 200 known examples of such meteorites, which give scientists a glance into Martian history right from the comfort of their own home world. The resulting study was also published in Science Advances today.

There’s a particular red flag in those Mars-borne rocks: chromium. It’s not that this heavy metal is unknown to the Red Planet—but one specific isotope, chromium-54, isn’t naturally found in the crust. In fact, chromium-54’s most likely origin is, indeed, chondrites. From the levels of chromium in this sample of meteorites, experts can estimate the number of chondrites that crashed into Mars.

“This allows us to place a firm estimate on the minimum amount of water that must have been present on Mars,” says Martin Bizzarro, an astronomer at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He and colleagues concluded that the chondrites that struck Mars, combined with water vapor rising from the planet’s churning interior, might have flooded it in an ocean nearly a thousand feet deep.

“This study looks really exciting and adds further support to the hypothesis that water-rich asteroids were the main source of volatiles to the terrestrial planets,” says King, who was not an author of the Martian rock study.

As for the Winchcombe meteorite, the scientists behind that paper have barely even scratched the surface of the rocks that have fallen from the sky and almost right into their lap. It’s a window into a cosmological period with limited hard clues—the oldest known Earth rocks, for instance, are only around 4 billion years old.

“There is so much more exciting science to come out of this stone,” says Daly. “It’s impossible to cover it all.”

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With Artemis I now well underway, NASA is ready to dive into lunar exploration like never before. The game plan includes new tools, new experiments, and new landing sites, all leading up to a new generation of astronauts walking on the moon again.

But modern missions are only possible with the regolith-breaking research of the past, including decades of trial and error by NASA and other space agencies to get us closer and closer to Earth’s satellite. While Apollo might get most of the credit, there were plenty of attempts before the Saturn V rocket made it to the launch pad—and plenty of successes after the program was retired. Here’s what we’ve learned from some of those moonshots.

[Related: Is it finally time for a permanent moon base?]

Pioneer 0 (Able 1)

August 1958

The US Air Force was the first group from any nation to attempt to launch a rocket beyond Earth’s orbit and to the moon. It failed catastrophically: The booster carrying the probe exploded barely a minute after blastoff. Thankfully, the craft was uncrewed and was carrying relatively crude astronomy gear. NASA was created just a few months later. The Air Force ran its space ballistics programs under many different name though the 2000s, until the US government finally established a new military branch called Space Force.

Luna 1

January 1959

The USSR edged out the US in the 1950’s by successfully launching a lunar aircraft—that just kept going. The Soviet machine was essentially a silver ball studded with antennas, but lacking any kind of engine. While it was apparently designed to smash into the moon, it missed the satellite by about 1.5 times the lunar diameter and wound up orbiting the sun instead. That in itself was a milestone first.

Luna 2

September 1959

Luna 2 was successful where Luna 1 failed: The USSR smashed an uncrewed metal sphere into the moon, making it the first time anyone landed anything on the lunar surface. It was also the first time a human-made object touched something else in the cosmos. The mission’s precise final destination isn’t known, but it was somewhere near the northern Palus Putredinis region (which translates to “marsh of decay”), famous for hosting Apollo 15 in 1971.

Ranger 7

July 1964

This space probe, made at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which had recently pivoted to robotic extraterrestrial craft, was NASA’s first success at a lunar impact mission—after 13 straight failures. Before crashing (on purpose) into the moon’s Sea of Clouds plains, the probe took more than 4,300 photos of the lunar surface. The images were used to identify future landing sites for Apollo astronauts.

Luna 9

February 1966

When the USSR’s automatic lunar station touched down on the moon, it was the first artificial object to survive its visit. Airbags helped cushion its impact near a 82-foot-deep crater, though it still bounced around a fair bit before stabilizing. Over the next three days, the craft sent back images through its TV camera system, which were later stitched together into panoramic views. The first “soft landing” on another world was followed shortly by Luna 10, which was the first successful lunar orbiter.

Zond 5

September 1968

The first living things to travel around the moon were the two Russian steppe tortoises (and some worms) aboard a Soyuz capsule that circled the satellite for six days. The unnamed reptiles survived the journey, splashing down in the Indian Ocean before being retrieved by Soviet rescue vehicles. Since then, we’ve launched dogs, an “astrochimp,” and more benignly, baby bobtail squid into space.

Apollo 8

December 1968

Not long after the tortoise brigade, NASA’s Apollo 8 mission put the first people, American or otherwise, in lunar orbit. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders spent Christmas Eve flying around the moon 10 times in a 13-foot-wide capsule. Anders also famously took the photo “Earthrise” on the trip.

Apollo 11

July 1969

The Apollo missions progressed in quick succession, with the climax being the first steps on the moon. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins logged some choice quotes as they made history in a voyage that was documented down to the last heartbeat. (Fun fact: Because NASA didn’t know whether there were microbes on the moon, the crew had to be quarantined for three weeks after their return.)

Chandrayaan-1

October 2008

India’s first deep-space mission made a big splash. The lunar probe, which kicked an ambitious new program into gear, carried NASA’s Moon Minerology Mapper, which, as a set of 2009 Science papers described, confirmed there were water molecules locked in our neighbor’s craters. Chandrayaan’s engineers lost contact with the machine 10 months into its orbital journey, following a sensor failure that caused it to overheat and killed its power supply. By then, though, the mission had completed 95 percent of its research objectives.

Chang’e 4

December 2018

The Chinese National Space Administration’s lander Chang’e 4 was the first craft to land on the moon’s far side. It touched down in a basalt crater in January 2019 and delivered a small rover, Yutu-2, that’s still exploring to this day. It also had some other special cargo: a cotton seedling that successfully germinated in a chamber on the moon, the first and only plant to do so.

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After a two-and-a-half month delay, NASA’s Artemis I mission blasted off from Kennedy Space Center today at 1:48 am EST. The launch ushers in a new era of human space exploration on the moon.

The launch came down to the wire after engineers discovered another liquid hydrogen leak in the mobile launcher about four hours before the planned go time. This prompted a “red team” to head to the blast danger zone to tighten the relevant valve, after which fueling resumed. The mission hit one more snag when the Range Flight Safety crew had to replace a faulty ethernet switch. The launch was put in a 10-minute countdown hold until a little after 1:30 am EST, when the green light finally came through.

The Orion spacecraft’s journey will cover about 1.3 million space miles and will fly farther than any other spacecraft built for humans. The mission is expected to last 25 days, 11 hours, and 36 minutes, with the capsule scheduled to splash back down on Earth on Sunday, December 11.

Artemis I is the first integrated test of NASA’s latest deep space exploration technology: Orion, the all-powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. It is the first of three missions, and will provide NASA with more critical information on non-Earth environments, the health impacts of space travel, and more for further research around the solar system. It also showcases the agency’s commitment and capability to return astronauts to the moon.

While Artemis I is uncrewed, three test dummies named Commander Moonikin Campos, Helga, and Zohar are on board to collect data on acceleration, vibration, radiation exposure, and other potential effects on the human body. The mission will also pave the way to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon as early as 2025

[Related on PopSci+: NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover on the cosmic ‘relay race’ of the new lunar missions]

Artemis I was originally scheduled to launch August 29, but was postponed due to weather an an engine bleed. Launch controllers were unable to chill down one of the the rocket’s four RS-25 engines (identified as Engine #3). It was showing higher temperatures than the other engines, and ultimately, the countdown was halted at T-40 minutes.

According to NASA, the engines needed to be thermally conditioned before a super-cold rocket propellant flowed through them before the liftoff. The launch controllers increased the pressure of the core stage liquid hydrogen tank to send a small amount of fuel to the engines and prevent any temperature shocks in the engines. This is the “bleed” the engineers were referring to. But they couldn’t get Engine #3 down to the needed launch temperature.

In a news conference on August 30, John Honeycutt, manager of the Space Launch System Program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said that the liquid hydrogen fuel used in the SLS rocket is about -423 degrees Fahrenheit. Engine #3 was about 30 to 40 degrees warmer than the other engines, which all reached about minus 410 degrees Fahrenheit. But the team didn’t find any technical issues with Engine #3, so the launch was rescheduled for the next available window.

During the scrubbed attempt, launch controllers faced several additional issues that were detailed by the NASA recap, including “storms that delayed the start of propellant loading operations, a leak at the quick disconnect on the 8-inch line used to fill and drain core stage liquid hydrogen, and a hydrogen leak from a valve used to vent the propellant from the core stage intertank.”

A second launch attempt was scrubbed on September 3 after the team encountered a liquid hydrogen leak while loading the propellant into the core stage of the SLS rocket. On September 26, another launch attempt was scrubbed as Hurricane Ian approached Florida.

[Related: Why the SLS rocket fuel leaks weren’t a setback]

Tropical weather also had an effect on today’s launch, which was originally scheduled for early November 14. NASA delayed it due to Hurricane Nicole and the SLS remained on the launchpad while the Category 1 late-season storm made landfall only 70 miles away.

“We design it to be out there,” said NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems Jim Free, in a news conference following the storm. “And if we didn’t design it to be out there in harsh weather, we picked the wrong launch spot.”

On Monday, NASA gave the “go” to proceed to launch and detailed their analysis of caulk on a seam between Orion’s launch abort system and the crew module adapter. Additionally, technicians replaced a component of an electrical connector on the hydrogen tail service mast umbilical. The mission passed the final decision gate at 3:22 pm EST on November 15.

“That’s the biggest flame I’ve ever seen,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson about finally getting the SLS rocket off the ground. He also reflected on the legacy of the Apollo missions, and how Artemis will open up a new chapter of lunar research and exploration. “We’re going back, we’re going to learn a lot of what we have to, and then we’re going to Mars with humans,” he said. “It’s a great day.”

About eight minutes into the launch this morning, the space capsule successfully separated from the rocket boosters. Nineteen minutes in, Orion unfurled its four solar arrays, each 63 feet long and embedded with cameras. As it entered Earth’s orbit, it was traveling at a speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour. NASA will share more mission updates throughout the day as the vehicle nears its destination and starts beaming back photos and other data.

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Liftoff for NASA’s next moon mission, Artemis 1, is T-minus one day after being postponed three times—twice due to engine problems and once to avoid an approaching storm. Boosted by the space agency’s most powerful rocket ever, this uncrewed expedition will bring us another step closer to human lunar exploration, and you can watch the launch from the comfort of your own home. 

It’s too late to purchase tickets to the main visitor complex, but you can watch the SLS rocket soar into the sky on NASA TV, NASA’s official live broadcast, the official NASA Twitch stream, or NASA’s mobile app. You can also register for free online to let the agency know that you’re hosting a watch party through their Virtual Guest program. (This will be especially exciting if you’re interested in receiving a virtual passport as a memento for the occasion, though this is not official documentation and will not guarantee you access into space. Stamps will be mailed after the event to registered guests.)

If you’d like to get your launch coverage in Spanish, you can listen en español on NASA’s YouTube page. Coverage of the launch itself will begin there at 12 a.m. Wednesday and will include interviews with Hispanic members of the mission. You can find a detailed breakdown of NASA’s coverage schedule on the space agency’s website.

And if you just can’t wait, NASA TV has been broadcasting on a regular schedule, and you can tune in at any time to learn more about outer space while we all wait for the countdown to hit zero.

This story was originally published on August 16, 2022 and has been updated regularly to keep pace with the mission’s frequent changes.

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China just completed construction on what is now the world’s largest telescope array at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The country plans to aim it at our sun as part of what one expert is calling “the golden age of solar astronomy.” As reported in Nature earlier today, the Daocheng Solar Radio Telescope (DSRT) cost 100 million yuan ($14 million USD), and is comprised of over 300 antenna dishes situated in a 3 kilometer (1.87 miles) circumference formation. Initial testing will begin in June 2024, and will focus on an upcoming increase in solar activity over the next few years, particularly on how solar eruptions affect Earth.

[Related: What happens when the sun burns out?]

The terrestrially situated DSRT joins NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, launched in 2018 and 2020 respectively, in ongoing efforts to study the sun’s complexities. Radio telescopes such as the DSRT are especially helpful when studying activity in the sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona, such as solar flares. Another solar weather event, a coronal mass ejection (CME), involves hot plasma eruptions that release high-energy particles which then can travel to Earth. This radiation often damages power grids and satellites—such as what happened in February 2022 when a solar storm blasted 40 Starlink satellites out of orbit.

“China now has instruments that can observe all levels of the sun, from its surface to the outermost atmosphere,” Hui Tian, a solar physicist at Beijing’s Peking University, told Nature.

[Related: How worried should we be about solar flares and space weather?]

Compared to similar telescopic arrays, the DSRT will be more finely tuned, and thus potentially capture weaker signals from high-energy particles emitted during CME events. As the sky above us becomes increasingly—and sometimes problematically—crowded by satellites, developing more reliable, accurate, and detailed analysis of solar activity will be critical to further expansion.

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One of NASA’s finest Martian missions is giving up the ghost. After four years of captivating scientific exploration, NASA’s Insight Mars Lander is entering its final days of operation. Losing power as thick layers of Martian dust block the craft’s solar panels, it’s almost time to say goodbye.

Touching down on Mars in 2018, InSight has been the first robotic lander to peer deep within the planet’s interior in order to study its crust, mantle, and core. The lander has since delivered scores of valuable scientific data and crisp images of the Martian surface back to scientists on Earth. Using an assemblage of powerful tools, the mission has helped answer key questions about how rocky planets both form and evolve in our solar system and far beyond it. 

To date, one of the rover’s greatest achievements was detecting and recording more than 1,300 “Marsquakes,” the Martian equivalent of earthquakes, in a bid to determine the planet’s level of tectonic activity. During its tenure, the craft even listened for meteorites impacting the planet. Though the resilient craft is currently still active, NASA scientists predict that the mission will end sometime in the next few weeks. As heartbreaking as it is to see InSight fall silent, the lander’s demise doesn’t come as a surprise. By the agency’s standards, the craft has already exceeded its original two-year mission timeline. 

The mission will officially end when the lander misses two consecutive communication sessions with the Mars Relay Network, a constellation of five spacecraft that orbit the planet and transmit commands and data between Earth and Mars missions on the ground. Afterwards, another telecommunications system, NASA’s Deep Space Network, will tune in for a while, just to make sure the final curtain has truly fallen. Still, even though all missions come to an end sooner or later, Mark Panning, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the project scientist for the InSight Mission, says this one will forever hold a place in his heart. 

“InSight will always be the thing that introduced me to space,” he says. “Scientifically speaking, I am over the moon about what we’ve done over Mars.” But in getting a full account of InSight’s life, its expiration opens up new questions about what it takes to survive Martian dust, whether its robotic corpse could be rescued, and what will happen to all of its data. 

In preparation for the mission’s final farewell, here are some of those burning questions answered.

Dust dooms all 

Dealing with dust is an inevitable inconvenience if you want to conquer the Martian surface. Dust storms on Mars can be all-consuming, extremely powerful, and, at times, very problematic.

In 2018, one of these storms darkened the sky for so long, it eventually felled NASA’s Opportunity rover, one of the agency’s oldest and most successful Mars missions. “Oppy,” as the bot was fondly called, was pronounced dead after scientists who hoped to revive the craft could no longer get in contact with it. As for InSight, the mission has far exceeded expectations in dealing with its own fair share of challenges, says Emily Stough, a senior engineer at JPL and an uplink lead, someone who helps coordinate the team’s mission. 

In previous attempts to survive these storms, InSight once put itself in safe mode to conserve its battery after dust stopped the sunlight from reaching its solar panels. Additionally, in May of this year, the craft’s power was so low, the mission had to suspend all of InSight’s other science instruments just to ensure the rover had enough juice to keep running its seismometer—a round dome-shaped instrument that like a stethoscope, sits on the surface, sensing seismic vibrations. To combat the dust’s negative effect, NASA originally made InSight’s solar panels so large that they were generating several times the energy the craft needed at the beginning of its mission. 

[Related: NASA’s InSight lander is basically about to play an epic claw game on Mars]

But why aren’t Mars missions equipped with the ability to wipe away any potentially life-ending obstructions? 

The historical lack of any windshield wiper-esque device on a Martian vehicle comes down to cost, efficiency, and potential risk, says Stough, who notes that adding unnecessary technical components to a craft’s design could endanger a mission’s goals. “One of the things with spacecraft design that we’re always pushing for is to keep things simple,” she says. “The more complex something is, the more risky it is that it’s going to fail.”

Could InSight rise again?

After its passing, InSight will be survived by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. Though the veteran craft Curiosity is puttering roughly 373 miles away from InSight, scientists say a rescue mission isn’t likely. Mainly, because the distance between them is even farther than the total distance Curiosity has traveled since the mission first touched down in 2012.

Besides current American efforts, another notable craft, China’s Zhurong rover, is also still in operation, exploring a region of the red planet called Utopia Planitia as it seeks to learn more about what Mars looked like in the past. 

When InSight’s solar panels are completely obscured, NASA currently has no plans to conduct what the agency calls “heroic measures” to find a way to reconnect and rescue the craft, save a lucky gust of wind that might sweep the offending particles off enough for InSight to begin charging again. But Panning says that the possibility for the craft to wake up does exist. 

[Related: Marsquakes reveal the red planet is way more radioactive than we thought]

“The lander itself was actually engineered so that it can come back,” Panning says. Like a computerized Frankenstein’s monster, there could come a day when enough dust is cleared for InSight to turn itself back on, but at the moment, such a scenario is as unlikely as a real zombie uprising. 

”We know what we need to listen for if that eventuality happens, but we’re of course not counting on that,” Panning says. 

Data dump

As long as mission scientists are able to communicate with InSight, the craft will certainly keep chugging along, continuing to take the last of its measurements and photos. All of its scientific data, which was already being periodically released to the public, will most likely later be collected in an event catalog with a summary of all the lander’s activities. Acting as a final memento mori, InSight’s data will be the scientific obituary that scientists today hope future generations access and use to conduct their own experiments and studies. 

“The spacecraft can die, but the science kind of keeps on giving,“ says Stough.

How it started, how it’s going.

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ONLY A SELECT FEW get the chance to escape Earth’s bubble, fewer will set foot on another orb, and fewer still will sit at the helm of a spacecraft. Of the 18 travelers NASA has tapped for its Artemis missions, which will bring people to the moon for the first time in more than a half-century, it is the pilot who must ferry the crew safely, pulling off historic landing maneuvers in an untried spaceship.

A likely candidate to sit in that chair is Victor J. Glover, who’s spent much of his 20-year career soaring across the heavens as a Navy test pilot and is among a new generation of astronauts aiming to create a permanent base camp on the moon’s surface. Artemis 3, which NASA intends to launch in 2025, will land two travelers for a six-day reconnaissance survey. The goal is to search our satellite’s southern craters for pure frozen water and scope out ideal spots for a way station.

Despite NASA’s return to form, Glover himself knows that this decade’s moonshot will look vastly different from the Apollo missions, which ran from 1968 to 1972. Though the midcentury launches established the technology needed to achieve US preeminence in space, “We’ve learned a lot in those 50 years,” Glover says. “So there are lots of ways that we have advanced hardware, software, and even people, policy, and procedures.” To level up, the Artemis cohort will undergo much more intense and extensive drilling than any Americans launched beyond Earth in the past.

After completing advanced flight training for the US Navy, Glover earned his “wings of gold” to become an official aviator in 2001. Later, he was selected as one of the eight members in the 2013 NASA astronaut class and became the first Black engineer to finish a long-duration mission on the International Space Station. More recently, he served as second-in-command on the original flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, the craft that would later carry everyday people into orbit. In late 2020, NASA announced he’d made the list of those eligible for the new lunar program, though the agency has yet to announce the actual assignments.

When training to survive beyond the safety of Earth’s atmosphere, potential crew members have to be ready for almost every possibility. That is to say, there are no typical days when you’re going through spaceflight drills. Sometimes Glover and the other trainees would spend six hours submerged in a pool to prime their bodies for death-defying spacewalks aboard the ISS. Now he curls his brain around long-winded Russian lessons for multinational missions, and he will soon be performing simulated moonwalks in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

But the best preparation he’s had for venturing into the solar system is piloting here on Earth. He’s logged 3,000 flight hours on more than 40 kinds of jets and planes, including the F/A-18 and the Boeing EA-18G Growler. That versatility, which includes handling war craft in perilous situations like the Iraq War, should help him steer a brand-new Orion capsule and SpaceX Starship landing system to an untouched part of the moon.

Setting the craft down also presents challenges. Once Artemis 3 enters lunar orbit, the crew will have to vertically orient the Starship rocket, which is streamlined to maneuver in thinner air and on a powdery surface. It’s one of the reasons the mission’s astronauts have been learning to fly helicopters, which use similar mechanics to descend and ascend.

The Artemis 3 journey will be double the length of Apollo 11’s, so its technologies have to facilitate endurance. The Orion vehicle is powered by solar arrays, will be able to transport four people (one more than its Apollo counterpart), and has a heat shield reinforced with carbon fiber and titanium to protect against the hostile temperatures and radiation of reentry. Lastly, in contrast to the analog setups of the last lunar program, Orion’s guidance, navigation, and control system includes advanced automated software that will free up the astronauts to complete other tasks, such as doing research and getting exercise.

While it’s still up in the air whether Glover will be the pilot for the next moon landing, he’s already adapting to the challenge. In fact, much of his confidence comes from being guided by former NASA flight controllers and directors, who are happy to see their wisdom being used to reach for new heights. “You often hear people talk about going to space and they say it is a marathon, not a sprint,” Glover says. “I actually will say no, this is a relay race, and they have handed us the baton.”

This story originally appeared in the High Issue of Popular Science. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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Heads up, space cadets—there are some with some very exciting sky gazing opportunities to take advantage of this week. Luckily, you should be able to watch them without a telescope.

First up is Tuesday’s full blood moon lunar eclipse. Stargazers in North America, Central America, most of South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia will see the moon turn a reddish hue very early tomorrow morning. In the United States, stargazers in the western part of the country will get the best views.

[Related: We’ve been predicting eclipses for over 2000 years. Here’s how.]

NASA predicts that at 3:02 a.m. EST, the moon will encounter Earth’s outer shadow in what’s called a penumbral eclipse. The partial eclipse phase will start at 4:09 a.m. EST. This is where the darker shadow (or umbra) is cast on a portion of the moon while the rest is still shining. Then, from 5:17 a.m to 6:42 a.m. EST, the eclipse will reach totality. This is when the moon will really live up to its blood moon name and take on a red tint.

If you prefer to sleep, especially after this weekend’s clock change, rather than watch the skies, you can still watch the event with NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio’s simulation of the eclipse and a livestream.

Full moons throughout the year have names tied back to Native American and European traditions. This November’s full moon is named a Beaver Moon, which comes from the time of year before winter when beavers take shelter, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. The other names for the full November moon also refer to this time of preparing for the cold and dark winter months ahead. It’s also called the Digging or Scratching Moon, in reference to animals foraging for nuts and greens and while bears dig their dens.

This will be the last total lunar eclipse until March 14, 2025.

Next up, we have the southern and northern Taurids meteor shower. The southern Taurids peaked over the weekend on November 4 and 5, but the northern is estimated to peak this Friday and Saturday. The Taurids occur annually in the months of October and November.

[Related: How to photograph a meteor shower.]

Shooting stars, or the product of super small debris and sand grains entering the Earth’s atmosphere and burning up after a meteor passes by the Earth, are common. The Taurids are special in part because of just how bright the meteors are. It produces pebble-sized debris instead of the minuscule dust-sized debris created in other meteor showers, which create a bright streak of light when it hits the Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA Meteor Watch. For the Taurids, the debris was likely left behind by comet Encke, whose last close approach to Earth was in 2015.

There is a chance that some very fast meteors known for their fireballs will be visible during this years shower because it is a potential Taurid Swarm Year. Meteor expert David Asher from Armagh Observatory and Planetarium discovered that Earth encounter swarms of larger particles shed by the comet Encke in certain years. 2022 is predicted to be one of those particularly stellar years. Encke also has the shortest known orbital period for a comet, at only 3.3 years for one complete trip around the sun.

The same rules apply to watch this meteor shower and lunar eclipse apply to pretty much all space-watching fun: go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. Viewing this meteor shower doesn’t require a telescope or binoculars, just eyes and a curious mind.

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The age of the asteroid is nigh. Asteroid science is quickly becoming one of humanity’s chief priorities in regard to space exploration, what with the influx of upcoming research endeavors, such as NASA’s ambitious Lucy spacecraft, which is currently on a 12-year voyage to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, and the European Space Agency’s upcoming Hera mission, which will travel back to the asteroid Dimorphous to survey the scene of the first cosmic bump. To date, global space agencies have had about 15 missions tasked with investigating asteroids, with a few others lined up in the future.

In comparison, the universe’s vast number of both wonderful and terrifying worlds often hogs the limelight of space research. So, what makes these wandering rocky objects so deserving of our scientific scrutiny? 

According to Tom Statler, a program scientist in the planetary science division at NASA, it’s because many aspects about asteroids remain a mystery to us. “With asteroids, we are just starting to learn how diverse they really are, and understanding that diversity and how it tells the story of our solar system is an important goal,” Statler told Popular Science in an email. 

One of the most anticipated of NASA’s upcoming ventures is the Psyche mission, a craft that will fly 280 million miles away to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to investigate whether a large metal-rich rocky body, thought to be an ancient core of an early planet, formed under the same or similar conditions to Earth’s core. By studying its properties, the details Psyche may reveal about the rock’s materials could be used to gain new insights into how our solar system survived its chaotic beginnings as well as how terrestrial planets like Earth formed.  

[Related: In its visit to Psyche, NASA hopes to glimpse the center of the Earth]

The agency planned to launch the craft earlier this year, but the mission missed its launch window due to the late delivery of the spacecraft’s flight software and equipment—technology that plays a vital part in the craft’s navigation. 

Since NASA had no time to complete preliminary testing on the system ahead of launch, the mission was pushed back until October 2023, at the earliest. To that end, NASA scientists’ have been reworking a new flight profile for Psyche because the delayed launch window also pushes back when the spacecraft would reach its destination, which had been set for 2026. Similar to its original flight plan, the spacecraft will still receive a gravity assist from Mars, a technique that uses a planet’s gravity to accelerate a spacecraft towards its goal, before finally arriving at the asteroid in August 2029. 

Though the delay is a setback, scientists are more concerned with getting the mission right than keeping to a strict schedule—after all, most science missions experience similar stops and starts during the planning and testing stages. However, NASA does plan on sharing findings and recommendations from an independent review board for the Psyche mission on Friday, November 4 during an online community townhall. Still, Psyche’s delay may cut in on other future research plans NASA has in store, namely putting a pin in Janus, one of the agency’s lesser-known asteroid-related science missions.  

Janus is a dual-spacecraft mission of twin “SmallSats”—a class of nanosatellites—which will explore two binary asteroids, systems of two asteroids that orbit a common center of mass. By taking visible and infrared images of these objects, scientists hope to understand the processes which led to their formation. Although Janus was slated to launch on the same SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as Psyche as a secondary satellite, the mission will now have to be rescheduled just the same. 

Once released from the main spacecraft, Janus’ two satellite crafts would have gotten a gravity assist from Earth in August 2025, before heading off and reaching their respective flyby destinations in 2026. It’s unclear if Janus might just hitch a ride next year with Psyche, but a statement from NASA confirms that the agency “continues to assess options for the Janus mission.” 

[Related: NASA is pumped about its asteroid-smacking accuracy]

While the future of Janus remains to be seen, interest and investment from a slew of different research fields continues to keep asteroid science firmly in the space scene. Erik Asphaug, a planetary science professor at the University of Arizona and a co-investigator on the Psyche science team, says that studying asteroids also has both an economic and a practical value. NASA, for example, is still high off the success of the DART mission, where a spacecraft was intentionally crashed into an asteroid to prove that humans are capable of altering our cosmic environment.    

“DART was a big success, it deflected the target several times faster than we anticipated,” Asphaug says. “It’s turned an idea into something that’s more technologically ready to be applied in hazards.” And moving asteroids at our whims would be an extremely advantageous tool for setting up future bases on the moon and other potential lunar operations, he adds. Asphaug believes that instead of relying on and draining resources from Earth, in the future, resource-rich asteroids could be used to support astronauts’ water, metal and mining needs. 

“I look at the devastation of mining on the Earth and I think it’s very short-sighted,” he says. “So I’m looking for the stimulation of the space industry around asteroids so that we can get a lot of the mining and manufacturing that’s done on Earth, and do it out in space.”

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Mars is lucky enough to have two confirmed moons, and both have some scary names. Deimos, the smaller of the two moons, is named for the Roman god of dread. Phobos is larger, and its name comes from from the Greek words for “fear” or “panic.”

However, excitement and joy reigned supreme when the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft closely encountered the Red Planet’s larger moon. The flyby in September allowed the scientists to test one of the 19-year-old spacecraft’s newest tools.

[Related: Two NASA missions combined forces to analyze a new kind of marsquake.]

Aboard the Mars Express is the MARSIS instrument, which was originally designed to study Mars’ internal structure. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the University of Rome, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) built it so that it would be used more than 155 miles away from the surface of Mars, or the typical distance between the Red Planet’s surface and the spacecraft. A major software upgrade allows the Mars Express to travel closer to a celestial body’s surface. This update could shed light on the moon Phobos’ mysterious origin by peering inside the moon.

“During this flyby, we used MARSIS to study Phobos from as close as [about 51 miles],” Andrea Cicchetti from the MARSIS team at INAF said in a statement. “Getting closer allows us to study its structure in more detail and identify important features we would never have been able to see from further away. In future, we are confident we could use MARSIS from closer than [about 24 miles]. The orbit of Mars Express has been fine-tuned to get us as close to Phobos as possible during a handful of flybys between 2023 and 2025, which will give us great opportunities to try.”

MARSIS is famous for its role in discovering signs of liquid water on Mars in 2005. It sends low-frequency radio waves to Phobos or Mars with a 131-foot-long antenna. Most of the waves are reflected off the surface, but some travel through, reflecting at the boundaries between layers of different materials below the moon’s surface.

[Related: What is a ‘Martian flower’?]

Studying the reflected signals can help scientists map the structure below the surface, revealing the thickness and composition of the material, among other features. The waves can also show evidence of different water, rock, ice, or soil layers. However, more mysteries lie in the internal structure of Phobos, and the MARSIS upgrade could help solve the puzzle.

“Whether Mars’ two small moons are captured asteroids or made of material ripped from Mars during a collision is an open question,” ESA Mars Express scientist Colin Wilson said in a statement. “Their appearance suggests they were asteroids, but the way they orbit Mars arguably suggests otherwise.”

“We are still at an early stage in our analysis,” Cicchetti added. “But we have already seen possible signs of previously unknown features below the moon’s surface. We are excited to see the role that MARSIS might play in finally solving the mystery surrounding Phobos’ origin.”

MARSIS is operated by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Italy and is funded by the ASI. The ESA and its Member States are part of the upcoming Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to land on Phobos and return a sample of its surface materials to Earth. The MMX mission is led by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and is scheduled to launch in 2024 and return its samples to Earth in 2029.

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It looks like many things to many people. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the classic 80s movie “Ghostbusters.” A ScrubDaddy sponge. An emoji. And a jack-o’-lantern, just in time for Halloween. Last week, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an image of the sun’s surface in an apparent smile. “Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the sun ‘smiling.’ Seen in ultraviolet light, these dark patches on the sun are known as coronal holes and are regions where fast solar wind gushes out into space,” NASA wrote in a tweet.

The patches making up the face in the image are coronal holes—cooler sections of the sun’s outer layer. This layer is usually around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The coronal holes show areas of high magnetic-field activity that steadily release solar wind. These cosmic gusts are a flow of protons, electrons, and other particles that travel through space.

[Related: Scientists just spotted a massive storm from a sun-like star.]

While this image is a visual treat, the activity behind it might prove to be more of a trick back here on Earth. The holes might be a solar storm that could generate a beautiful aurora borealis in Earth’s more northern latitudes or wreak havoc on the planet’s telecommunication systems. Solar storms like these can become troublesome when the particles make it to Earth’s atmosphere, where television and radio antennae can pick up their signals. A big enough solar storm can cause power outages and damage electrical grids. The Carrington Event in 1859 was one of the most significant solar storms in recorded history and caused fires at telegraph stations and even auroras in tropical regions. With significantly more telecommunications in the 21st Century, a similar event could cause severe problems to the technology we rely on daily.

One more recent spooky solar storm was the appropriately named Halloween Storms of 2003. With minimal warning, three giant sunspot groups formed on the sun’s surface by October 26, 2003. The largest of these spots was 13 times bigger than Earth’s, and 17 major solar flares erupted from the sun. “The storms affected over half of the Earth-orbiting spacecraft, intermittently disrupting satellite TV and radio services and damaging a Japanese scientific satellite beyond repair,” according to a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration post. “The solar activity also sent several deep-space missions into safe mode or complete shutdown and destroyed the Martian Radiation Environment Experiment aboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission. At the height of the storms, astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to take cover from the high radiation levels, which had only happened twice before in the mission’s history.”

[Related: Violent space weather could limit life on nearby exoplanets.]

According to some researchers, the planet is also long overdue for a massive solar event. “Scientists expect that to happen on average, with a couple percent probability, every year, and we’ve just dodged all these magnetic bullets for so long,” University of California at San Diego physics professor Brian Keating told The Washington Post. “So it could be really scary, and the consequences could be much more dramatic, especially in our technology-dependent current society. There could be something on our way for Halloween night after all. Pretty spooky, but hopefully not too spooky.”

The Solar Dynamics Observatory was first launched in 2010 with a mission to investigate how solar activity is created and drives space weather. The spacecraft measures the sun’s atmosphere, magnetic field, energy output, and the sun’s steamy interior. But the Solar Dynamics Observatory is hardly the only NASA entity working hard to bring spooky images back to Earth this Halloween—the Hubble Telescope also captured a spooky “cosmic keyhole” that looks a bit like a portal into another dimension on October 28.

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Space agencies like NASA keep a close watch on our nearest neighbor, Mars. With almost a dozen active missions on or around the Red Planet, they can track its daily weather, just like our forecasts here on Earth, and notice even small changes on its surface. 

Today, though, astronomers revealed a much bigger change: two new large impact craters in the Martian crust, observed by both the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) and the InSight lander. These are the largest impact craters discovered by MRO to date and the first detection of seismic surface waves, according to two new studies published in the journal Science.

“We never thought we’d see anything this big,” said Ingrid Daubar, planetary scientist at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Lab and MRO/InSight team member, in a NASA press conference on the new findings. Quakes on Mars, like those resulting from these meteor impacts, reveal more detailed information on its contents, and how rocky planets, including Earth, came to be.

Here at home, we’ve been measuring earthquakes for centuries—but marsquakes are newer territory. The InSight mission, which landed on Mars in 2018, recorded its first marsquake less than a year into its operations and has since recorded more than 1,300 of them. The lander provides NASA and other research teams a unique opportunity to understand what’s going on under the Martian surface, and study its core, mantle, and crust in detail. To fully understand how rocky planets like Mars and Earth form, we need more information on exactly how they’re structured—information that InSight aims to provide. MRO, which has been orbiting around Mars for 16 years, provides detailed images of the surface for birds-eye-view context for observations taken on the ground.

Mars has plenty of quakes caused by its own seismic activity, but without a thick atmosphere to protect it like Earth, astronomers also expect meteors to hit the surface and cause additional waves. The first of the newly detected impacts, known as S1000a, happened in September 2021, and created a cluster of craters in an area of rocky, craggy terrain to the North of Mars known as Tempe Terra. The second impact, called S1094b, hit in December 2021, and was much closer to InSight. It impacted a flat, dusty region on Amazonis Planitia, and formed a larger crater 150 meters in diameter—a distance comparable to the height of the Washington Monument. This created an approximately magnitude 4 quake, which is fairly small by Earth’s standards, but large for our less tectonically active neighbor.

Both of these detections were true displays of teamwork between the various missions. For S1000a, InSight noticed the seismic signatures, and scientists used that to direct MRO’s search to image the crater. For S1094b, on the other hand, the MRO team independently noticed the freshly formed crater, and collaborated with InSight researchers to confirm that the two spacecraft’s seismic signatures were, in fact, from the same event. The impact was large enough that it could even be seen in MRO’s daily weather camera, MARCI, allowing its team to pinpoint the timing of the impact to within a day. From these visuals, they estimated that the meteor that struck Mars was around 5 to 12 meters across, somewhere between the length of a giraffe and a telephone pole. 

[Related: Meteoroids make little ‘bloop’ noises when crashing into Mars]

When quakes happen on a rocky planet, the waves bounce around in different ways depending on the materials they encounter. So far, all the quakes observed by InSight have been characterized as body waves that travel deep within the planet’s mantle. Any major event—volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, etc.—sends both body waves and shallower surface waves rippling through a planet. This left astronomers wondering about Mars’ crust. 

They finally got a clue with the meteor impact last December. S1094b created large waves that traveled through the crust, making it possible for InSight to measure them. Doyeon Kim, senior research scientist at ETH Zurich and lead author of one of the new studies, says that these kinds of detections, called surface waves, “were already a part of the mission goals of InSight from the beginning.” This marks the first unambiguous detection of surface waves on any planet other than Earth, and revealed that Mars’ crust may be a bit more uneven than previously thought. 

Images of S1094b from MRO’s HiRISE also show peculiar lighter patches on the Red Planet’s surface around the new crater, which the team identified as frozen water dredged up from below the crust upon impact. We’ve known Mars has ice caps for a while, but this is the lowest latitude that ice has been observed at so far. What’s more, the combination of imaging and seismic data gave the researchers particularly precise measurements of the location of the impact and the path the seismic waves took through Mars, providing information on the properties of the rocks along those paths.

This groundbreaking combination of observations opens the door for a much more detailed understanding of Mars and other rocky planets, from the physics of meteor impacts to the structure of planetary interiors and beyond. Unfortunately, this may be InSight’s last hurrah—dust has been slowly covering its solar panels for months, and in around four to eight weeks it will no longer have enough power to operate. The team sees this as a high note to end on: Their observations could pave the way for fresh discoveries on Mars.

[Related: 5 new insights about Mars from Perseverance’s rocky roving]

“The new results on crustal structure far from the InSight landing site will improve our overall understanding of the formation and evolution of the Martian crust,” says Martin Knapmeyer, planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin. “In a cooperation kindled by a common goal, international science teams of two different Mars missions joined efforts to obtain the best possible results.”

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NASA hopes to take us back to the moon for an extended stay via its Artemis lunar program, but lots of logistics still need to be worked out before we can safely set up on the moon for the long haul. One such hurdle is the actual material astronauts will use to construct a permanent lunar base, which will require a host of engineering considerations we normally never need to think about down here on Earth. Thanks to recent breakthroughs, however, Artemis organizers could at least save themselves a lot work of schlepping materials back and forth between Earth and the moon by 3D-printing base camp building blocks directly on the lunar surface using debris and saltwater.

[Related: What’s next for Artemis 1.]

According to an announcement earlier this week via the University of Central Florida, a team from the school’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering developed a new construction material composed partly of lunar regolith—the loose rocks, dust, and other debris covering the Moon’s surface. Using both 3D printing and a method called binder jet technology (BJT) in which a liquid binding agent (in this case saltwater) is infused into a bed of moon powder supplied by UCF’s Exolith Lab, Associate Professor Ranajay Ghosh’s group was able to produce bricks capable of withstanding pressure of up to 250 million times greater than our own atmosphere.

Although the initial cylindrical bricks produced are comparably weak, blasting them with 1200 degrees Celsius heat strengthened them enough to be a viable tool in the eventual structures NASA hopes to establish on the Moon, such as a modular cabin and mobile home. “This research contributes to the ongoing debate in space exploration community on finding the balance between in-situ extraterrestrial resource utilization versus material transported from Earth,” Ghosh said in UCF’s announcement. “The further we develop techniques that utilize the abundance of regolith, the more capability we will have in establishing and expanding base camps on the moon, Mars, and other planets in the future.”

[Related: Why NASA’s Artemis is aiming for the moon’s south pole.]

Apart from the structural stability, one of the chief benefits would be a dramatic reduction in material costs for the Artemis lunar base. It’s a lot cheaper to hypothetically produce at least some of your needs on the moon instead of lugging them up via extremely expensive shuttle launches. As such, the regolith bricks could also bode well for future bases on Mars, too. It definitely beats a suggestion last year from a Manchester University student that involved constructing abodes using human blood and urine as their binding agent.

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The Kuiper Belt, the donut-shaped ring of icy bodies that stretches far beyond Neptune’s orbit, is home to some of the strangest objects in our solar system. Inside this icy region, there are trillions of comets, asteroids, and heavenly remnants leftover from the earliest days of our solar system, some of which many humans may already be familiar with, like Pluto, Eris, and Makemake. 

Yet one of its most interesting oddities is the dwarf planet, Haumea.

Though it was discovered less than two decades ago, information about the dwarf planet is sparse as Earth-based telescopes have a hard time making precise measurements because of how distant it is. But the little we do know about Haumea suggests that it is an extremely strange and important entity. Shaped almost like a deflated football, the planet spins faster than anything else of its size, whirling on its axis in only four hours. Besides having two moons, Haumea also has a very faint ring system and is covered almost exclusively in crystalline water ice, making it an excellent candidate to investigate whether it might have once hosted life. 

“From an astrobiological perspective, there are a lot of things we don’t yet know about how life got started, even on Earth, and we live here,” says Jessica Noviello, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’re still trying to figure out exactly what kinds of ingredients need to go into creating life in the first place, and we know that one of the most important is water.”

[Related: NASA’s first attempt to smack an asteroid was picture perfect]

Another reason researchers are so interested in learning more about Haumea is because it’s the largest of a dozen “sibling” water-rich objects that appear to have similar orbits to each other. To date, it’s the only such “family” system in the Kuiper Belt, but scientists like Noviello say one of the area’s biggest mysteries is how this unique system came together—including its intriguing configuration. 

To try and piece together a sharper picture of the planet’s origins and evolution, Noviello and a team of researchers used computer simulations to model billions of years of its past history to see what kind of conditions may have led a “baby Haumea” to the system’s mature modern-day incarnation.

By plugging Haumea’s estimated size, mass, and rotational rate into their model, the researchers were able to use these simulations to break the planet down and build it up from scratch to investigate many of the chemical and physical processes that helped its development. Once they had all three of these aspects, they calculated the object’s angular momentum (its ability to continue to spin) throughout history with the assumption that it stayed constant. After running dozens of simulations filled with different variables and small changes to test how each variable would affect its evolution, they came up with a few results that seemed to be on the right track. 

“One of the leading ideas is that these family members were knocked off by a big collision,” says Steven Desch, a professor of earth and space exploration at Arizona State University. If pieces of Haumea were bumped due to some clumsy meet-cute with another object, there would be considerably more fragments, and many of them would have differences in their orbits. But that isn’t the case, Desch notes. Instead, their models posit that when planets were still forming, Haumea did collide with another object, but the pieces that flew off back then are not what’s seen in today’s Haumean family, as other researchers have suggested. 

The family instead came much later, when the planet’s dense rocky structure settled in the center and became its core, while lighter density ice rose to its outer layers. “The effect of having all that water percolate through the core and react with rock and turn dense rock into a less dense clay is it swells up the core,” says Desch. In effect, some of the mass on the outside of Haumea was flung off, and those pieces created the Haumean family scientists study today. 

[Related: What’s hiding in the outer solar system?]

Their model was also able to make predictions about the amount of ice on Haumea, as well as the planet’s volume. With the help of another code called IcyDwarf, researchers even concluded that at one point Haumea was warm enough to sustain a liquid water ocean in its interior for about 250 million years. Though that ocean has since frozen over, Noviello says it’s invaluable discovering what the origins of another planet might have looked like, if only to help humans discover more icy and ocean worlds in the future. 

“Knowing about the diversity of ocean worlds and their potential for life in the solar system helps us put everything into context and focus on the best targets for more extensive observations for detecting any kind of bio signatures in the future,” she says. “On Mars, the phrase is to follow the water and it’s no different with exoplanets.”

Correction (October 20, 2022): This story has been updated to correct the amount of time the Haumea spins on its axis. One of the references of Jessica Noviello‘s name was previously misspelled. We regret the error.

The post This weird dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system has a new origin story appeared first on Popular Science.

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There’s a phrase that rings loudly in the heads of Popular Science editors any time we bring together a new Brilliant 10 class: “They’ve only just begun.” Our annual list of early-career scientists and engineers is as much a celebration of what our honorees have already accomplished as it is a forecast for what they’ll do next. To find the brightest innovators of today, we embarked on a nationwide search, vetting hundreds of researchers across a range of institutions and disciplines. The collective work of this year’s class sets the stage for a healthier, safer, more efficient, and more equitable future—one that’s already taking shape today. 

• Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz: Turning food waste into filters
• Sangeetha Reddy: Harnessing the power of immunotherapy for breast cancer
• Mohammad Hajiesmaili: Decarbonizing the internet
• Rachael Bay: Predicting how wildlife will adapt to climate change
• John Blazeck: Building an immune system from scratch
• Daniella Mendoza DellaGiustina: Spying our future in near-asteroid flybys
• Samitha Samaranayake: Making transit sustainable and equitable
• Chantell Evans: Finding the roots of neurodegenerative disease
• Aaron Streets: Mapping every human cell
• Daniel Larremore: Crunching the numbers to get ahead of outbreaks

Turning food waste into filters

After earning a bachelor’s in chemistry in 2007, Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz took a position at an oil refinery along the Schuykill River in South Philadelphia. Part of her job was to analyze refined petroleum products, like acetone and phenol, that other industrial manufacturers might buy. She was also tasked with testing the refinery’s wastewater—which, she couldn’t help but notice, flowed out right next to a residential neighborhood. “Literally, if you looked out past the plant,” she says, “you could see houses close by.”

That was more than a decade before an explosive fire forced the refinery to close and spurred an unprecedented cleanup effort. But the experience got Abdul-Aziz thinking about the life cycle of chemical byproducts and their potential impacts on human health. She went back to school for a PhD in chemistry, and her lab at the University of California, Riverside, now focuses on giving problematic waste streams—from plastic trash to greenhouse gases—a second life.

To start, Abdul-Aziz decided to investigate whether she could convert corn stover into something with economic value. The stalks, leaves, tassels, and husks left over from harvest add up to America’s most copious agricultural waste product. Much of it is left to rot on the ground, releasing methane and other greenhouse gases. A small percentage does get salvaged and converted into biofuels, but the payoff usually isn’t worth the effort.

Abdul-Aziz and her colleagues set out to test multiple processes for turning the refuse into activated carbon, the charcoal-like substance that’s used as a filter everywhere from smokestacks to your home Brita pitcher. Her analysis, published in 2021, looks at the activated carbon produced by various methods—from charring stover in an industrial furnace to dousing it in caustic substances—and the molecular properties that affect which contaminants it can soak up. The ultimate aim: Tell her what kind of chemicals you want to clean up, and she’ll create a carbon filter that can do the trick.

Abdul-Aziz has since applied to patent her customizable process, and is looking into other sources of detritus and use cases. Wastewater treatment companies have expressed interest, she says, in using her tools on environmental toxins such as PFAS—the stubborn, hormone-disrupting “forever chemicals” ubiquitous in household products and prone to contaminating drinking water. At the same time, she has also demonstrated that she can derive activated carbon from citrus peels, and is now investigating whether she can do the same with plastic trash.

She’s also exploring an even bigger swing. Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation awarded her half a million dollars to develop absorbent materials to capture carbon dioxide emissions and help convert them back into useful materials such as polymers and fuels. Abdul-Aziz wants to identify practical recycling processes that don’t require overhauling existing infrastructure. “For us it’s about trying to develop realistic solutions for these sustainability problems so they can actually be implemented,” she explains. It’s these small steps that she believes will move us toward a truly circular economy—one where materials can be reused many times. And with any luck, her innovations will help buffer the worst impacts of the very petrochemicals that inspired her quest.—Mara Grunbaum

Harnessing the power of immunotherapy for breast cancer

In recent decades, immunotherapy has been a game-changer in cancer treatment. Drugs that augment the body’s natural immune response against malignant tumors have dramatically improved survival rates for patients with diseases like lymphoma, lung cancer, and metastatic melanoma. But the method has been far less successful in breast cancers—particularly the most aggressive ones. Sangeetha Reddy, a physician-scientist at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, is trying to change that. “We could do better,” she says.  

Reddy works with patients with triple-negative breast cancers, so-called because the malignancies don’t have any of the three markers scientists have historically targeted with anti-cancer drugs. Even with aggressive chemotherapy and surgery, the prognosis for these patients—who account for about 15 percent of breast cancer diagnoses worldwide—is relatively poor. Immunotherapies, in particular, often fail because breast cancers tend to hobble the body’s dendritic cells, the roving molecular spies that sweep up pieces of suspicious material and carry them back to immune system headquarters to introduce as the new enemy. When the body doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be attacking, boosting its power is of little use.

Reddy is therefore trying to figure out how to restore dendritic cell function. As a physician-scientist, she uses a relatively new approach that she describes as “bedside to bench and back.” She treats patients in her clinic, conducts in vitro and mouse experiments in her lab, and designs and manages her own clinical trials. This physician-scientist method enables a positive feedback loop: Reddy can analyze tumors excised from her own patients to assess whether treatments are working. Then she can test out new drugs on those same cancer cells. When she identifies a promising tactic, she can design clinical trials to test things like safety, dosage, and timing. At every step, she can find something in what she learns to incorporate back into her research or her patients’ care.

This cyclical strategy has led Reddy to the combination of three drugs that she’s currently testing against triple-negative breast cancer: Flt3-ligand, a protein that stimulates the proliferation of dendritic cells; a chemical that helps activate these cells and others; and anthracycline, a standard chemotherapy agent. In mice, this triad kept breast cancer tumors at least 50% smaller than chemotherapy alone. “A couple of our mice, we actually cured them,” says Reddy. A Phase-1 clinical trial investigating the safety and efficacy of the regimen in people began enrolling patients earlier this year.

Though it can take years to work out all the kinks in a new cancer treatment and clear the hurdles on the way to FDA approval, Reddy’s multi-pronged strategy should streamline this process as much as possible. Doing so will allow her to enable a transformation she’s been eyeing since she started to specialize in cancer treatment more than eight years ago. As a fellow at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Reddy worked with melanoma patients in clinical trials of immunotherapy, which gave her a firsthand look at the treatment’s emerging potential. “We were taking patients who would have passed away within months and giving them ten years,” she says. “Just that hope that we can get there with [triple-negative breast cancer] led me to this path.”—M.G.

Decarbonizing the internet

The internet as we know it is inextricable from the cloud—the ethereal space through which all e-mails, Zooms, and Instagram posts pass. As many of us well-know, however, this nebulous concept is anchored to the Earth by sprawling warehouses that crunch and store data in remote places. Their energy demands are enormous and increasing exponentially: One model predicts they will use up to 13 percent of the world’s power by 2030 compared to just 3 percent in 2010. Gains in computing efficiency have helped matters, says University of Massachusetts Amherst assistant professor of informatics and computer science Mohammad Hajiesmaili, but those improvements do little to reduce the centers’ impact on the environment.

“If the power supply is coming from fuel sources, it’s not carbon optimized,” explains Hajiesmaili. But renewable power is sporadic, given its reliance on sun and wind, and geographically constrained, since it’s only harvested in certain places. This is the puzzle Hajiesmaili is working to solve: How can data centers run on carbon-free energy 24/7?

The answer involves designing systems that organize their energy use around a zero-carbon goal. Several approaches are in the works. The simplest uses schemes that schedule computing tasks to coincide with the availability of renewable energy. But that fix can’t work on its own given the unpredictability of bright sunlight and gusts of wind—and the fact that the cloud doesn’t sleep. Another strategy is “geographical load balancing,” which involves moving tasks from one data center to another based on local access to clean power. It, also, has drawbacks: Transferring data from one place to another still requires energy, Hajiesmaili notes, and, “if you’re not careful, this overhead might be substantial.”

An ideal solution, and the focal point of much of his work these days, involves equipping data centers with batteries that store renewable energy as a reserve to tap, say, at night. “Whenever the carbon intensity of the grid is high,” he says, “you can just discharge from the battery instead of consuming local high-carbon energy sources.” Even though batteries that are big enough, or cheap enough, to fully power data centers don’t exist yet, Hajiesmaili is already developing algorithms to control when future devices will charge and discharge—using carbon optimization as their guiding principle. This “carbon-aware” battery use is just one of many ways in which Hajiesmaili thinks cloud design should be overhauled; ultimately, the entire system must shift to put carbon use front and center. 

Most big technology companies have pledged to become carbon-neutral—or negative, in Microsoft’s case—in the coming decades. Historically, they have pursued those goals by buying controversial offset credits, but interest in carbon-intelligent computing is mounting. Google, for one, already uses geographical load balancing and is continuing to fine-tune it with Hajiesmaili’s input, and cloud-computer company VMWare has its own carbon-cutting projects in the works. In his view, though, the emerging field of computational decarbonization has applications far beyond the internet. All aspects of society—agriculture, transportation, housing—could someday optimize their usage through the same approach. “It’s just the beginning,” he says. “It’s going to be huge.”—Yasmin Tayag

Predicting how wildlife will adapt to climate change

Evolutionary biologists typically think about changes that took place in the past, and on the scale of thousands and millions of years. Meanwhile, conservation biologists tend to focus on the needs of present wildlife populations. In a warming world, where more than 10,000 species already face increased risk of extinction, those disciplines leave a crucial gap. We don’t know which animals will be able to adjust, how quickly they can do it, and how people can best support them.

Answers to these questions are often based on crude generalizations rather than solid data. Rachael Bay, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Davis, has developed an approach that could help make specific predictions about how at-risk species might evolve over the coming decades. “Injecting evolution into conservation questions is really quite novel,” she says.

The central premise of Bay’s work addresses a common blind spot. Conjectures about how climate change will affect a particular creature often assume that all of them will respond similarly to their changing habitat. In fact, she points out, it’s exactly the variation between individuals that determines if and how a species will be able to survive.

Take the reef-building corals she looked at for her PhD research: Thought to be one of the organisms most vulnerable to extinction as a result of warming oceans, some already live in hotter waters than others. Bay identified genes associated with heat tolerance in the coral Acropora hyacinthus and measured the prevalence of that DNA in populations in cooler waters; from there, she was able to model how natural selection would change the gene pool under various climate-change scenarios. Her findings, published in 2017 in Science Advances, made a splash. The data indicated that the cooler-water corals can, in fact, adapt to warming if global carbon emissions start declining by 2050; if they don’t, or keep accelerating as they have been, the outlook becomes grim.

Bay has continued her work on corals and other marine organisms, but she has also applied her method to terrestrial animals. In 2017, work she conducted with UCLA colleague Kristen Ruegg bolstered the case for keeping a Southwestern subspecies of the willow flycatcher on the US endangered list. Though the species as a whole is abundant, with a breeding range that spans most of the US and southwestern Canada, the subgroup that occupies southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico has struggled with habitat loss. The scientists demonstrated not only that the desert-dwelling birds were genetically distinct enough to merit their own listing, but also that individuals in that population have unique genes that are likely associated with their ability to survive temperatures that regularly top 100°F. Protecting this small subgroup—less than one-tenth of a percent of the total population—could help the entire species persist.

That kind of specific, forward-looking decision is exactly what Bay hopes to enable for other wildlife facing an uncertain future. Other recent work has focused on how yellow warblers, Anna’s hummingbirds, and a coastal Pacific snail called the owl limpet might shift their ranges in response to climate change. “The pie-in-the-sky goal is to make evolutionary predictions that can be used in management,” she says.—M.G.

Building an immune system from scratch

When a new pathogen invades, the immune system unleashes a suite of antibodies into the bloodstream—the bodily equivalent of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. While most of those proteins will do an okay job of neutralizing the trespasser, a valuable few will zero in with deadly accuracy. The faster scientists can identify and replicate those killers, the better we’ll get at beating disease. Case in point: Antibody therapy helped many at-risk patients sick with COVID-19. The big challenge in studying the body’s natural response, however, is that in order to do so, people have to get sick.

John Blazeck, of Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, is developing a workaround. Instead of using the human body as a “bioreactor” for antibodies, he wants to use microbes. That way, the repertoire that fires off in response to a pathogen can be studied in, say, a flask or a chip. The dream of a “synthetic immune system” has kicked around biotech circles for the last two decades, but Blazeck’s work is ushering it into reality. “We can have a million different microbes, making a million different antibodies that would mimic what a person would be doing,” he says.

His career began in synthetic biology, a field that involves sticking genes into microbes to make them do new things. Specifically, he tried to get them to pump out biofuels. His interest in advancing health, however, led him to use his expertise to fight disease in 2013, when he injected microbes with the human genes known to produce antibodies. Recreating the immune system in this way is a colossal undertaking. “The catch is that the process has been optimized for millions of years, so it’s very hard to make it happen,” he explains.

Nevertheless, his team has made foundational progress that could underpin the future of this research. Recently, they figured out how to efficiently mutate antibody DNA after it’s been inserted into microbes, which will help them select antibodies that bind more tightly to a given pathogen. The process is meant to mimic how the immune system uses its B cells—the body’s antibody factories—to self-select the proteins that generate the strongest defenses.

Building a synthetic immune system is only half of what Blazeck is doing to supercharge immunity. The rest builds on his postdoctoral research on engineering a means to thwart cancer cells’ defenses. Tumors secrete molecules that shut down immune cells trying to get in their way. Blazeck—with his former advisor George Georgiou, of the University of Texas, Austin—found an enzyme that can render those molecules harmless, allowing the immune system to do its thing. Ikena Oncology, a company specializing in precision cancer treatment licensed the enzyme, one of the first of its kind, in 2015. Both aspects of Blazeck’s work are at the forefront of burgeoning new fields, and he’s been heartened by the early response. “I hope that people continue to appreciate the value of trying to engineer immunity, and how it can contribute to understanding how to fight disease—and also directly fight disease,” he says.—Y.T.

Spying our future in near-asteroid flybys

The whole world will be watching when a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid called Apophis swoops by Earth in mid-April 2029. But Daniella Mendoza DellaGiustina, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, will be looking more closely than anyone else. Her gaze will be trained on what the space rock reveals about our past—and what it means for our future. “It’s going to captivate the world,” she says. In 2022, NASA named her principal investigator of the OSIRIS-APEX mission, which will send the OSIRIS-ReX spacecraft that sampled the asteroid Bennu in 2020 chasing after Apophis.

DellaGiustina wasn’t always interested in space, but as a “cerebral young person” gazing into the famously clear skies of the desert Southwest, she had a lot of big questions: Why are we here? How did we get here? A community college class in astronomy piqued her interest. Then, a university course on meteorites led to an undergraduate research position with Dante Lauretta, who later became the principal investigator of OSIRIS-ReX. DellaGiustina knew “very early on” that the research environment was right for her: “You’re actively pushing the boundary of human knowledge.” A master’s degree in computational physics led her to field work on the ice sheets of Alaska, which resemble those on other planets. Eventually, she returned to the University of Arizona, where completed a PhD in geosciences (seismology) while working on image processing for OSIRIS-ReX.

A belief that asteroids hold answers to the big questions of her youth drives her to understand them from the inside out. “They really represent the leftovers of solar system formation,” she says. “It’s kind of like finding an ancient relic.” So-called carbonaceous asteroids like Ryugu and Europa—rich in volatile substances, including ice—may explain how water and the amino acids that jumpstarted life once made their way to Earth. They may also offer a glimpse of the future: “Near-Earth asteroids, especially, hold tremendous potential for resource utilization,” DellaGiustina says, “but one might also take us out someday.”

Apophis is not considered dangerous, but it will swing by at roughly one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon. “If we ever have an incoming threat to our own planet, we need to understand ‘what’s the structure of this thing?’ so that we can properly mitigate against it,” she says. With DellaGiustina at the helm, the OSIRIS-APEX project will use this once-in-7,500-years chance to study how close encounters with planets can change an asteroid. Earth’s tidal pull, for example, is expected to “squeeze” Apophis—a tug DellaGiustina hopes to measure via a seismometer dropped on the surface.

Lauretta, who has worked with DellaGiustina since she was an undergraduate, jumped at the chance to nominate her to lead the next phase of the OSIRIS mission. She had always been keen on designing experiments—Lauretta seriously considered her proposal to equip OSIRIS-ReX with a dosimeter to measure the radiation risk for future asteroid-hopping astronauts. Her “decisive leadership is rare and critical for a program of this size,” he adds. On the off chance that an errant space rock ever threatens Earth, it’ll be a comfort to know she’s at work behind the scenes.—Y.T.

Making transit sustainable and equitable

Picture this: It’s Tuesday morning, and you’re planning to ride the train to work. Walking to the station takes 25 minutes, so you hop on the local bus. Today, though, the bus is delayed, and doesn’t reach the station in time to catch the train. You wait for the next one. You’re late for work.

If your boss is a stickler and you rely on public transit, a missed connection can be make or break. These are the kinds of problems that Samitha Samaranayake, a computer-scientist-turned-civil-engineer at Cornell University, has made it his mission to solve. He designs algorithms to help varied modes of mass transit work more seamlessly together—and help city planners make changes that benefit those who need them most.

Before Cornell, Samaranayake spent several years studying app-based ridesharing, including the potential of on-demand autonomous car fleets. In 2017, he co-authored an influential paper showing that companies like Uber and Lyft could reduce their contribution to urban congestion if cars were dispatched and shared efficiently. But he quickly became disillusioned with entirely car-centric solutions. “It’s convenient for people who can afford it,” he says, but when it comes to moving city-dwellers efficiently and accessibly, mass transit can’t be beat.

So Samaranayake began investigating how new technology can best be incorporated into city transit systems—and possibly solve some of their most-common pitfalls. Take the “last mile problem:” the challenge of transporting people from transit hubs in dense urban areas to the less-centralized places that they need to go—like their homes in far-out neighborhoods. If these connections aren’t quick and reliable, people may not use them. And if people aren’t using a neighborhood bus line or other last-mile service, says Samaranayake, a transit agency might cut it rather than run more buses, making the problem worse.

That’s where the technology developed by ride-sharing companies becomes useful, says Samaranayake. In recent years, he’s designed algorithms to integrate real-time data from public transit with the software used to dispatch on-demand vehicles. This could let transit authorities send cars to pick up groups of people, then deliver them to a commuter hub in time to make their connections.

This approach is known as “microtransit,” and after pandemic-related delays, a test project with King County Metro in Seattle launched earlier this year. It uses app-based rideshare vans to shuttle shift workers and others who live in the outskirts of the city to and from the regional rail line. Although it’s too early to measure success, Samaranayake has seen enthusiastic uptake from some commuters without many good alternatives.

That points toward his other goal: finding better ways to quantify how equitably transit resources are apportioned, so that city planners can ultimately design new systems that reach more people more efficiently. This social-justice element helps motivate Samaranayake to keep working on mass transit, even though funding has typically been more abundant for flashier technology like self-driving cars.

That could be changing: In recent years, Samaranayake and his collaborators have received nearly $5 million from the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to pursue their vision. “Transit is not ‘cool’ from a research perspective,” Samaranayake admits. “But it’s the only path forward to a transportation system that is environmentally sustainable and equitable, in my view.”—M.G.

Finding the roots of neurodegenerative disease

Anyone who’s taken high school biology knows that mitochondria are the powerhouses of cells. While it’s true that these organelles are responsible for converting sugars into energy, they also have many less-appreciated jobs, including generating heat, storing and transporting calcium, and regulating cell growth and death. In recent decades, researchers have linked the breakdown of these functions to the development of certain cancers and heart disease.

When it comes to diseases like dementia, Parkinson’s, and ALS, however, Duke University cell biologist Chantell Evans thinks it’s time to look specifically at neurons. “Mitochondria are implicated in almost every neurodegenerative disease,” says Evans. By unraveling how neurons deal with malfunctioning mitochondria, her work could open up possibilities for treating many currently incurable conditions.

Evans’ work focuses on understanding a process called mitophagy—how cells deal with dead or malfunctioning mitochondria—in neurons. There are plenty of reasons to believe brain cells might manage their organelles in unique ways: For one, they don’t divide and replenish themselves, which means the 80 billion or so we’re issued at birth have to last a lifetime. Neurons are also extremely stretched out (the longest ones run from the bottom of the backbone to the tip of each big toe) which means each nucleus has to monitor and maintain its roughly two million mitochondria over a great distance.

Before Evans launched her investigation in 2016, research on epithelial cells—those that line the surface of the body and its organs—had identified two proteins, PINK1 and Parkin, that seem to be mutated in patients with Parkinson’s disease. But, confusingly, disabling those proteins in mice in the lab didn’t lead to the mouse equivalent of Parkinson’s. To Evans, that suggested that the story of neural mitophagy must be more complicated.

To find out how, she went back to basics. Her lab watched rodent brain cells in a dish as they processed dysfunctional mitochondria. Evans gradually cranked up the stress they experienced by removing essential nutrients from their growth medium. This, she argues, is more akin to what happens in an aging human body than the typical process, which uses potent chemicals to damage mitochondria.

Results she published in 2020 in the journal eLife found that disposing of damaged mitochondria takes significantly longer in neurons than it does in epithelial cells. “We think, because [this slowness] is specific to neurons, that it may put neurons in a more vulnerable state,” she explains. Evans has also helped identify additional proteins that are involved in the best-known repair pathway—and determined that that action takes place in the soma, or main body, of a neuron but not in its threadlike extensions, known as axons. That, she says, could mean there’s a separate pathway that’s maintaining the mitochondria in the axon. Now, she wants to identify and understand that one too.

Thoroughly documenting these mechanics will take time, but Evans says charting the system could lead to precious medicine. “If we understand what goes wrong,” she says, “We might be able to diagnose people earlier… and be more targeted in trying to develop better treatment options.”—M.G.

Mapping every human cell

It took the Human Genome Project a decade to lay out our complete genetic code. Since then, advances in sequencing technology have vastly sped up the pace by which geneticists can parse As, Gs, Ts, and Cs, which has allowed biologists to think even bigger—by going smaller. Instead of spelling out all of a person’s DNA, they want to create a Human Cell Atlas that characterizes the genetic material of every single cell in the body. Doing so will create “a reference map of what a healthy human looks like,” explains bioengineer Aaron Streets.

Understanding what makes individual cells unique requires insight into the epigenome—the suite of chemical instructions that tell the body how to make many kinds of cells out of the same string of DNA. “This is where the notion of the epigenome comes into play,” says Streets, who runs a lab at the University of California, Berkeley. All cells may be reading from the same book, but each one’s epigenome highlights the most relevant passages—essentially how and which genes are expressed. Streets is inventing the tools scientists need to zero in on those specifics.

Reading the epigenome is important, says Streets, because, in addition to showing why healthy cells act the way they do, it can also reveal why an individual one goes haywire and causes illness—cancer, for example. Once the markers of a rogue actor are known, he explains, researchers can develop therapeutics that address the question: “How can we engineer the epigenome of cells to fix the disease?”

Characterizing cells is highly interdisciplinary work, which Streets is perfectly suited for. He majored in art and physics but “just wasn’t good at” biology organismal studies. It wasn’t until graduate school, where he worked with a physicist-turned-bioengineer, that he realized how much insights gleaned from math, physics, and engineering could benefit the study of living things.

As a start, this year Streets and his colleagues published a protocol in the journal Nature Methods for reading particularly mysterious parts of the genome. The tool identifies sections within hard-to-read DNA regions that bind proteins—and thus have epigenomic significance—by bookending the strings with chemical markers called methyl groups. To James Eberwine, a pharmacology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer of single-cell biology, “it is going to be very useful” for building a cell atlas.

Now, Streets’s lab is building new software to piece together the millions of sequences that comprise a single cell’s genome. And, because mapping every single anatomical cell will require a fair bit of teamwork, the programs they create are shared freely with other scientists who can use the tools to make their own discoveries. “If you look at really huge leaps in progress in our understanding of how the human body works,” says Streets, “they correlate really strongly with advances in technology.”—Y.T.

Crunching the numbers to get ahead of outbreaks

Like everyone in early 2020, Daniel Larremore wondered whether this virus making its way around the globe was going to be a big deal. Would he have to cancel the exciting academic workshop he had planned for March? What about his ongoing research on the immune-evading genes of malaria parasites?

As the answers became clear, so did his next big task: predicting the trajectory of the disease so that scientists and policymakers could get ahead of it. “You have a background in infectious diseases and mathematical modeling,” thought the University of Colorado Boulder computer scientist. “If you’re not going to make a contribution when there’s a global pandemic, when are you going to step up?” He put his work on the epidemiology of malaria on hold as he emailed colleagues studying the emerging outbreak to ask how his lab could help. “I sent that mid-March,” he says, “and didn’t stop working until early to mid-2021.”

Before coming to Boulder, Larremore had been a postdoctoral candidate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he was first immersed in the world of infectious disease—how it was transmitted, how it evaded immunity, and how to model its spread. It prepared him well for the first wave of COVID-19 research questions, which were all about working around the shortcomings of antibody tests. At the time, they were the only tools available for counting infections, but their sensitivity and specificity varied widely. A paper he co-authored in those early months described how to estimate infection rate, a key metric in justifying public health measures like mask mandates and social distancing.

As the pandemic wore on, Larremore and his collaborators continued to think forward: “What’s the question we’re going to be asking six months from now that we’ll wish we had the answer to right away?” The research they conducted now underpins much of American COVID policy: Their modeling found that speed, not accuracy, in testing was more important for curbing viral spread; that the success of immunity passports depended on the prevalence and infectiousness of the virus; and that elderly and medically vulnerable people should be prioritized for vaccination. “Dan did a huge amount of work across a number of different disciplines, and I think the contributions he’s made have really been remarkable,” says Yonatan Grad, an associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who frequently collaborates with Larremore.

While his work on COVID-19 winds down, Larremore is already helping develop a general theory of disease mitigation involving at-home testing. Through modeling, he’s hoping to find out how much testing might slow the spread of different infectious diseases—and how that changes with disease or the variant. He’s excited about leveraging the jump in public science literacy induced by COVID-19: “If you tell people to self-collect a nasal swab, they’ll do a great job at it,” he says. He imagines a world where the public can reliably self-diagnose common illnesses like flu, and take the appropriate steps (wearing a mask, opening windows) to protect others. “That just seems really empowering,” says Larremore. “And, potentially, a cool future.” —Y.T.

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After years of being bypassed in favor of exploring other far-distant locales in the solar system, Venus is on its way to experiencing a renewed wave of interest among researchers. 

A new mission concept out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could allow scientists to explore Venus like never before, all without ever touching the ground. Instead, it will soar high above the skies by balloon. While the NASA mission is still in its experimental stages, the concept involves pairing a small orbiter with an aerial robotic (or aerobot) balloon, about 40 feet in diameter. Though Venus has often been called Earth’s twin due to their similarities in size and structure, the two couldn’t be more different. Earth is a world teeming with life, while Venus is a primordial soup that might have burned away any chance it had of living organisms. Clearly they’re fraternal, not identical. 

Staying aloft in the upper levels of Venus’ atmosphere, the orbiter would use the planet’s powerful winds to circumnavigate the globe, all the while improving our knowledge of Earth’s sibling by taking scientific measurements of the planet. These experiments would range from analyzing the chemical compositions of its clouds, to monitoring the atmosphere for acoustic waves that could tell scientists more about Venus-quakes.  

A balloon might just be the key to traversing Venus’ challenging environment, says Paul Byrne, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis and a long-time science collaborator on the concept. “You really can’t get in other places as hospitable in the solar system as just above the cloud layer and Venus, which is pretty special,” he explains. 

[Related: These scientists spent decades pushing NASA to go back to Venus. Now they’re on a hot streak.]

Perpetually cloaked by a thick haze of carbon dioxide clouds, the second planet from the sun is home to some of the most scorching temperatures in our solar system. The planet is so hot, every spacecraft humanity has ever sent to its surface has essentially been melted down and crushed. To survive the hellish landscape, any spacecraft that plans to visit Venus (and live to tell the tale) would have to be made of materials able to withstand crushing air pressures—more similar to pressures a mile below sea level on Earth—and endure sulfuric acid rain. These falling droplets in the atmosphere are so highly concentrated, that they could easily burn a hole through a person’s skin. 

In floating miles overhead Venus’ surface, Byrne says that a balloon orbiter could potentially operate for several Earth months; a huge leap from other attempts to explore our closest neighbor. As the orbiter drifts across the Venusian sky, the craft will move higher as it is carried northward by the planet’s prevailing winds, “which means not only will we cover a huge amount of real estate, we will also be able to understand what the atmosphere is like at different times [of the] day,” says Byrne. Collecting data at different timestamps would be helpful in creating a more detailed picture of the planet’s atmosphere. Scientists might also be able to answer other mysterious characteristics of the planet, such as the lack of an intrinsic magnetic field. 

While using balloon-technology may seem like a novel alternative to conventional  spacecraft the US has deployed in the past, like landers and rovers, another space superpower used these buoyant devices to explore Venus decades earlier. In the 1980s, the Soviet’s unveiled the wildly successful Vega program, twin spacecraft that were designed to deliver payloads of advanced landers and balloons to the surface. The data Vega sent back allowed scientists to flesh out intricacies of the planet’s complex weather system. 

But now, more than 35 years later, the team at JPL and the Near Space Corporation recently completed two successful flight tests of a concept prototype in Nevada. The model is about one-third the size of what the craft would be if the idea is turned into a true mission. 

[Related: We finally know why Venus is absolutely radiant]

“The goal of this flight was to measure the flight dynamics of the balloon,” says Jacob Izraelevitz, a robotics technologist at JPL. One of the reasons they chose Nevada, Izraelevitz said, is because of its home to the biggest dry lake bed In the continental US. The vast, open landscape would make it easier to recover the craft and avoid any crashes into obstacles, like buildings or towers. 

The flights also revealed lots of practical information, the team noted. Based on the current estimate of the aerobot’s capabilities, they found that the balloon could carry about 100 kilograms of payload. This would be enough to pack solar panels, as well as communications technology needed for transmitting data back to Earth. And though the mission isn’t meant to be a life detection mission, learning more about the kinds of conditions that makes Venus uninhabitable may go a long way in understanding planetary environments that could support life. 

Caleb Turner, an aerospace project engineer at Near Space Corporation, says that the technology performed even better than expected. “These flight tests exposed the aerobot to its most extreme conditions yet, albeit nothing compared to the harsh Venus atmosphere, and it demonstrated a resilience that was beyond expectations,” he told Popular Science in an email. The aerobot was able to withstand balloon inflation, launch, flight to multiple altitude levels, and landing—important benchmarks that the prototype passed without a hitch. But Turner says they were able to do a second test merely a day later. The ease of repetition is a notable feat that “gives all involved a boost of confidence that this work is positioning itself to be ready for a Venus mission.”

Though it could be years before NASA sends this aerobot mission to the stars, the agency has already promised to head back to Venus with the upcoming VERITAS and Davinci+ missions, both slated for no earlier than 2028. As we continue to stretch past our own world to get a better view of others in the search for Earth-like planets, such a blistering destination is worth exploring again. 

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The Red Planet is home to some pretty nasty conditions: extreme cold temperatures of about –80 degrees Fahrenheit, an atmosphere that doesn’t provide much protection from the cold, and a very different definition of water. It likely won’t be harboring life anytime soon, but questions still remain about whether it once had lifeforms.

A new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy finds that roughly four billion years ago, Mars could have been home to an underground world of microscopic organisms. However, if simple life like microbes existed, they “might actually commonly cause its own demise,” the study’s lead author, Boris Sauterey, now a post-doctoral researcher at Sorbonne University, told the Associated Press. He added that the results, “are a bit gloomy, but I think they are also very stimulating. They challenge us to rethink the way a biosphere and its planet interact.”

[Related: 5 new insights about Mars from Perseverance’s rocky roving.]

Early on in its life, Mars likely had an atmosphere that was much denser than the one it has today, and the planet itself was possibly even filled with water. According to Regis Ferrière, a lead author on the study and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, the carbon dioxide and hydrogen in this ancient atmosphere could have created a temperate climate that allowed water to flow and, possibly, microbial life to thrive.

For a hypothetical simulation of what Mars may have looked like billions of years ago, the team created a model of Mars’ crust, atmosphere, and climate and paired it with an ecological model of a group of microbes that we would find on Earth that metabolize hydrogen and carbon dioxide. “Our goal was to make a model of the Martian crust with its mix of rock and salty water, let gases from the atmosphere diffuse into the ground, and see whether methanogens could live with that,” Ferrière said in a press release. “And the answer is, generally speaking, yes, these microbes could have made a living in the planet’s crust.”

Methanogenic microbes live by converting chemical energy from their environment and releasing methane as a waste product, the same way that humans convert the oxygen they breathe into carbon dioxide. They thrive in the most extreme habitats on Earths like hydrothermal vents along fissures in the ocean floor and can support entire ecosystems that are adapted to living with crushing water pressures, near-freezing temperatures, and total darkness.

The team theorized that Mars’s methane-releasing microbes might been living just beneath the surface of the planet, with a few inches of dirt protecting them against radiation. According to Sauterey, any spot on Mars that was free of ice could have been swimming with these microbes, just like on Earth.

However, so much hydrogen being sucked out of the thin and carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere would have put the planet’s protective layer in jeopardy. As the amount of hydrogen in the atmosphere depleted, the temperature on the planet plummeted and any of the microbes at or near the Martian surface probably would have gone deeper in an attempt to survive.

[Related: NASA’s Perseverance rover is on a hunt for microbes on Mars.]

“We think Mars may have been a little cooler than Earth at the time, but not nearly as cold as it is now, with average temperatures hovering most likely above the freezing point of water,” Ferrière said. “While current Mars has been described as an ice cube covered in dust, we imagine early Mars as a rocky planet with a porous crust, soaked in liquid water that likely formed lakes and rivers, perhaps even seas or oceans.”

The team also applied models that predict the temperatures at the surface and crust to simulate the weather conditions faced by early Martian lifeforms. They combined that with a separate ecosystem model to predict whether or not life of this kind would have been able to survive in this environment over time.

“The problem these microbes would have then faced is that Mars’ atmosphere basically disappeared, completely thinned, so their energy source would have vanished and they would have had to find an alternate source of energy,” Sauterey said in a press release. “In addition to that, the temperature would have dropped significantly, and they would have had to go much deeper into the crust. For the moment, it is very difficult to say how long Mars would have remained habitable.”

The researchers suggest that the best places to look for evidence of this past life is Hellas Planitia (a still unexplored area) and the Jezero Crater. NASA’s Perseverance Rover is collecting rocks in the crater on the northwestern side of Isidis Planitia that will be returned to Earth within the next decade.

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Jupiter’s moon, Europa, might have one of the best chances of supporting life in our solar system. And now, scientists at NASA have captured the closest images of the natural satellite in over two decades.

On Thursday, NASA’s Juno spacecraft came within 219 miles of the moon, allowing its camera, the JunoCam, to capture high-resolution images of Europa’s terrain. At the same time, Juno collected data about the geologic features and atmosphere, including its interior and ice shell structure. The photo and data gathering will help close gaps in understanding Europa’s surface and subsurface ocean. “The JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area,” Candy Hansen, a lead developer and operator of the JunoCam, said in the news release.

[Related: Europa’s icy surface may glow in the dark]

Scientists have long been interested in Europa, one of Jupiter’s 80 moons, as a prime candidate for extraterrestrial life because of its massive, potentially liquid ocean. Although the moon would need many more factors to support life than just liquid water, its icy crust and ocean floor could foster essential elements like hydrogen. The Juno mission will help scientists learn more about the moon, getting one step closer to understanding if simple organisms can survive on the icy satellite. 

Although Juno resulted in breathtaking images of Europa, it did so by working under immense constraints, with only two hours of time to collect data. Still, the spacecraft accomplished its goal as it flew by at roughly 14 miles per second. 

These photos of Europa aren’t Juno’s first big accomplishment, and NASA scientists hope they won’t be its last. The spacecraft launched in 2011, originally on a five-year trip to study Jupiter. But after traveling 1.7 billion miles and successfully orbiting the gaseous giant, scientists decided the spacecraft was not done, and Juno went on its way to study the entire Jovian system. But even after the mission ends in 2025, its impact is far from over. The Juno mission will help inform the upcoming Europa Clipper mission, scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive at Europa in 2030. 

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The moon’s soil is filled with small spheres of glass. These pieces of glass, often called beads, formed millions of years ago when asteroids slammed into the lunar surface, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. 

But these microscopic lunar glasses–which range in size from a few tens of micrometers to a few millimeters–don’t just tell the moon’s story. They also offer a window into meteorite impacts on Earth, too. The research team found that the moon’s collisions occurred around the same time as many of Earth’s most notorious impacts—including the one that scientists say was responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs (except for birds).

“The moon is kind of our witness to what the history of large impacts really is in our neighborhood of the solar system,” says Rhonda Stroud, director of the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University who was not involved in the news study. Understanding the impact history of our corner of the solar system, Stroud adds, could help improve scientists’ models to anticipate the frequency of asteroids that hurtle toward us.

The tiny glass orbs at the center of this new research came directly from the moon. They were brought to Earth via China’s Chang’e-5 moon mission, which returned samples to scientists’ waiting hands and labs in December 2020. These fresh moon rocks were shared in research collaborations around the globe, and the international team behind the new Science Advances paper quickly began analyzing the spheres in the lunar samples.

[Related: The asteroid that created Earth’s largest crater may have been way bigger than we thought]

The team determined that these glasses formed anywhere from 2 billion to just a few million years ago, says Katarina Miljkovic, associate professor in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University and an author on the new paper. 

When an impactor such as an asteroid slams into a world’s surface, she explains, the energy of that collision ejects material out. Some of the kinetic energy can heat up that matter while it’s in flight. Some of it melts, if it heats up enough. Because it is in flight when it melts and then cools again, Miljkovic says, that molten material hardens into a spherical shape, falling back to the ground as glass beads. 

The researchers analyzed the glass beads brought back by Chang’e-5 to determine their age, size, and other characteristics. They also looked at remote sensing data of craters on the moon to determine which impact events might have thrown out the specific lunar glasses that they studied. 

Though the team found a large span of ages for the beads and their associated craters, some periods were richer in beads. “There were actually peaks of ages, clusters of beads at a certain age,” Miljkovic says. 

Those peaks, Miljkovic says, likely identify significant events. Perhaps, she says, simply more asteroids traveled through the area and hit the moon at once, or maybe a big asteroid broke up nearby and sent a flurry of impacts raining down on the moon. 

The team also noticed the peaks’ timing often aligned with significant impact events on Earth. For example, Miljkovic says, one peak seems to coincide with the ages of a large collection of meteorites found on our planet. 

“The moon is our satellite, and relatively speaking, on an astronomical scheme of things, the Moon and Earth are close. They occupy almost exactly the same space in the solar system,” Miljkovic says. So if a group of space rocks were to come hurtling our way, it would make sense that both celestial bodies would be hit around the same time.

The challenge, however, is that Earth does not retain a clear record of impacts. That’s because, unlike the moon, our planet undergoes erosion, weathering, and planetary processes that bury craters, impact glasses, and other evidence, Stroud says. “Earth is also covered with oceans and trees and soil and cities,” they add. “A lot of craters are still hidden. It takes a long time to recognize them and some of their signatures are just gone.”

Meanwhile, on the moon, the evidence of impacts is littered across the surface in the form of craters and these glass beads. So the lunar surface is a helpful tool for researchers piecing together our own planet’s history.

One of the most famous impact sites on Earth is the Chixculub crater in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. That 6-mile-wide crater is thought to be where an asteroid slammed into the Earth some 66 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction event that killed the non-avian dinosaurs. 

It turns out, one of the peaks in the lunar impact data in the new study corresponds to that timing. “We’re just showing that the ages are coinciding,” Miljkovic says. But it’s possible that there might have been companion asteroids flying along with the dinosaur-killing space rock when it encountered the Earth-Moon system and some of them hit the lunar surface, too.

What happened on the moon at that time isn’t the only evidence that there were multiple asteroids causing collisions in our neighborhood around 66 million years ago. In August in a different paper in Science Advances, another research team described what might be another impact crater on Earth formed at the same time offshore of West Africa. If it’s confirmed, this crater could support the idea that a large asteroid broke into pieces and those fragments crashed into both Earth and the moon at the end of the Cretaceous period.

[Related: A second asteroid may have crashed into Earth as the dinosaurs died]

Tying craters on the moon to impact sites on Earth is tricky business, Stroud cautions. “It’s interesting and promising,” they say, but “the links to the craters on Earth are still speculative.” The “smoking gun,” Stroud says, would be to be able to match the composition and age of impacting material from both worlds. But, though the study authors can’t directly connect any moon craters to ones here, this research “shows the power of well-planned sample return” that provides the geologic context of the samples. 

“Maybe we’re onto something,” Miljkovic says. “We can only look at evidence and estimate the likelihood of something happening, but that’s the kind of story that, if true, is really cool.”

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The autumnal equinox is upon us, and vibrant falling leaves aren’t the only things returning to our skies. The aurora borealis, a.k.a. the northern lights, will begin to dazzle in high-latitude skies far more often. But why? Popular Science and UCLA space science professor Robert McPherron answer your questions.

What is the autumnal equinox?

For residents of the Northern Hemisphere, the autumnal equinox marks the beginning of fall. On the equinox, day and night are approximately the same length—the name “equinox” comes from Latin words meaning “equal” and “night.” The 2022 autumnal equinox for the Northern Hemisphere is on September 22 at 9:04 pm EDT. At this time, unlike during the solstices, Earth is tilted neither toward nor away from the sun. When the sun shines on the equator, it results in equal light for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. 

What is an aurora? How does it happen?

While auroras light up the night sky with their brilliant greens and pinks, much more is happening behind the scenes. The aurora borealis and aurora australis, around the north and south poles, respectively, are caused by the sun’s continuous solar wind and solar storms, specifically coronal mass ejections, which are huge bursts of plasma. Through these ejections and via this wind, the sun sprays electrons into Earth’s magnetic field. There, these charged particles combine with the field and shoot into Earth’s atmosphere, following the path of the magnetic field towards the poles. As these particles collide with molecules in the atmosphere, they produce light. 

[Related: We finally know what sparks the Northern Lights]

McPherron likens the process to switching off old television sets: “When you turn them on, if you had good hearing, you’d hear a very high pitched whine indicative of a very high frequency” caused by a beam of electrons. “And if you turned it off, you’d see a spot right in the center of the screen.” That glowing spot on the fluorescent screen results when a beam of electrons hits it from the inside. “And that’s exactly what the aurora is,” he says. “It is electrons coming down along a magnetic field line, and the screen is the atmosphere.”

Where do the colors come from?

As the electrons enter Earth’s atmosphere, they excite gases, namely oxygen and nitrogen. The oxygen and nitrogen molecules, flush with energy beyond their normal state, emit photons as they go back to their baseline levels, resulting in light. Oxygen emits green and red light, while nitrogen emits blue.

Why is auroral activity high around the equinox?

This answer is more complicated but involves two effects: the equinoctial effect and the Russel-McPherron effect–recognize the name? The first arises from Earth’s poles meeting the solar winds at a right angle, while in the latter, the solar winds are antiparallel to Earth’s magnetic field. Together, these two effects explain an increase in autumn auroral activity and make the weeks around the equinoxes the prime times to view auroras.

[Related: Meet STEVE, and 7 other mysterious glowing things you’ll find in the night sky]

In other words, the tilt of Earth’s axes enhances “the strength of the solar wind magnetic field” that’s interacting with our planet, McPherron says.

How can I see an aurora?

First, you’ll likely need to travel north. Unless you’re in Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada, in which case, according to McPherron, stay exactly where you are—that’s a prime spot to catch the northern lights. The best place to view an aurora is in the auroral zone, which is centered around 67º north of the equator, but the aurora borealis has been reported as far south as Hawaii during a time of significant solar flares in the 1800s. 

In the US, the best states to view the northern lights include Alaska, Maine, and Minnesota, among others. Although solar activity that causes auroras occurs all day, the best way to see auroras with the naked eye is at night, McPherron says. Activity is most frequent around 11 p.m., but auroras can occur from dusk to dawn, he adds. 

But no matter what, if you see an aurora, you are in for a treat. Watch for the sky to begin to brighten, ramping up over 15 to 20 minutes. “And then you’ll just see a burst poleward in all of this fantastic activity,” McPherron says.

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

People have been exploring the surface of Mars for over 50 years. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, nations have sent 18 human-made objects to Mars over 14 separate missions. Many of these missions are still ongoing, but over the decades of Martian exploration, humankind has left behind many pieces of debris on the planet’s surface.

[ Related: “The FCC is finally pulling the reins on space junk” ]

I am a postdoctoral research fellow who studies ways to track Mars and Moon rovers. In mid-August 2022, NASA confirmed that the Mars rover Perseverance had spotted a piece of trash jettisoned during its landing, this time a tangled mess of netting. And this is not the first time scientists have found trash on Mars. That’s because there is a lot there.

Where does the debris come from?

Debris on Mars comes from three main sources: discarded hardware, inactive spacecraft and crashed spacecraft.

Every mission to the Martian surface requires a module that protects the spacecraft. This module includes a heat shield for when the craft passes through the planet’s atmosphere and a parachute and landing hardware so that it can land softly.

The craft discards pieces of the module as it descends, and these pieces can land in different locations on the planet’s surface – there may be a lower heat shield in one place and a parachute in another. When this debris crashes to the ground, it can break into smaller pieces, as happened during the Perseverance rover landing in 2021. These small pieces can then get blown around because of Martian winds.

A lot of small, windblown trash has been found over the years–like the netting material found recently. Earlier in the year, on June 13, 2022, Perseverance rover spotted a large, shiny thermal blanket wedged in some rocks 1.25 miles (2 km) from where the rover landed. Both Curiosity in 2012 and Opportunity in 2005 also came across debris from their landing vehicles.

Dead and crashed spacecraft

The nine inactive spacecraft on the surface of Mars make up the next type of debris. These craft are the Mars 3 lander, Mars 6 lander, Viking 1 lander, Viking 2 lander, the Sojourner rover, the formerly lost Beagle 2 lander, the Phoenix lander, the Spirit rover and the most recently deceased spacecraft, the Opportunity rover. Mostly intact, these might be better considered historical relics than trash.

Wear and tear take their toll on everything on the Martian surface. Some parts of Curiosity’s aluminum wheels have broken off and are presumably scattered along the rover’s track. Some of the litter is purposeful, with Perseverance having dropped a drill bit onto the surface in July 2021, allowing it to swap in a new, pristine bit so that it could keep collecting samples.

Crashed spacecraft and their pieces are another significant source of trash. At least two spacecraft have crashed, and an additional four have lost contact before or just after landing. Safely descending to the planet’s surface is the hardest part of any Mars landing mission–and it doesn’t always end well.

When you add up the mass of all spacecraft that have ever been sent to Mars, you get about 22,000 pounds (9979 kilograms). Subtract the weight of the currently operational craft on the surface–6,306 pounds (2,860 kilograms)–and you are left with 15,694 pounds (7,119 kilograms) of human debris on Mars.

Why does trash matter?

Today, the main concern scientists have about trash on Mars is the risk it poses to current and future missions. The Perseverance teams are documenting all debris they find and checking to see if any of it could contaminate the samples the rover is collecting. NASA engineers have also considered whether Perseverance could get tangled in debris from the landing but have concluded the risk is low.

The real reason debris on Mars is important is because of its place in history. The spacecraft and their pieces are the early milestones for human planetary exploration.

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When you think of planets with rings, Saturn normally takes the cake for its iconic icy spirals. But, Saturn isn’t the only planet in our solar system that the universe put a ring on. As a matter of fact, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) just capture the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in over 30 years.

“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” said Heidi Hammel, a Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for Webb, in a press release.

In 1989, NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its late 80’s flyby. Now, JWST has taken this crisp image of the planet’s rings—some of which have not been detected since that mission over three decades ago. The photo clearly shows Neptunes finer bands of dust, in addition to the bright and narrow rings.

[Related: The outer solar system awaits—but getting there may not be as easy as we’d like.]

Neptune is an ice giant due to the chemical make-up of the planet’s interior. When compared with the solar system’s gas giants (Jupiter and the more famously ringed Saturn), Neptune is much richer in elements that are heavier than hydrogen and helium.

JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) can see space objects on a different light spectrum called the near-infrared range. This means that Neptune doesn’t appear blue in the pictures the NIRCam takes. “The planet’s methane gas so strongly absorbs red and infrared light that the planet is quite dark at these near-infrared wavelengths, except where high-altitude clouds are present,” according to NASA. These methane-ice clouds show up as bright streaks and spots, which reflect sunlight before begin absorbed by the methane gas. The Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory have also recorded these rapidly changing cloud features.

Astronomers suspect that the thin line of brightness circling the planet’s equator could be a sign that there is atmospheric circulation that fuels Neptune’s winds and storms. It glows at infrared wavelengths more than the surrounding cooler gases because the atmosphere drops down and warms at Neptune’s equator.

It takes Neptune 164 Earth-years to orbit the sun, so its northern pole is just out of view for astronomers. However, the JWST images show a possible brightness up there. JWST can see a previously-known vortex at Neptune’s southern pole, but a continuous band of high-latitude clouds surrounding it was revealed for the first time in these images.

[Related: Neptune is already an ice giant, but it might be having a cold snap.]

JWST also captured pictures of seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons (Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton). Neptune’s large and “unusual” moon Triton is dominating this portrait of the planet, creating a point with diffraction spikes that make it look like a star. Triton is covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen and it reflects 70 percent of the sunlight that hits it. It is much brighter than Neptune in this image because the planet’s atmosphere is darkened by methane absorption when seen at at these near-infrared wavelengths. Since Triton orbits Neptune in an unusual retrograde orbit (aka backwards), astronomers believe that this moon may have originally been a Kuiper belt object that Neptune used its gravity to capture. Studies of both Triton and Neptune by JWST are planned in the coming year.

Since the first documented discovery of Neptune in 1846, Neptune has long fascinated scientists. Compared to Earth, it 30 times farther from the sun. It orbits in the remote, dark region of the outer solar system, where the sun is so small and faint that high noon on Neptune is similar to a dim twilight on Earth.

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From cities in the sky to robot butlers, futuristic visions fill the history of PopSci. In the Are we there yet? column we check in on progress towards our most ambitious promises. Read the series and explore all our 150th anniversary coverage here.

Lately, all eyes are turned towards the moon. NASA has another launch attempt tentatively scheduled next week for the highly-anticipated Artemis 1 uncrewed mission to orbit Earth’s satellite, one of the first steps to set up an outpost on the lunar surface. But humans—and science fiction writers—have long imagined a moon base, one that would be a fixture of future deep space exploration. About five years before Sputnik and 17 years before the Apollo missions, the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, Arthur C. Clarke, penned a story for the 1952 April issue of Popular Science describing what he thought a settlement on the moon could look like. Clarke, who would go on to write 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, envisioned novel off-Earth systems, including spacesuits that would “resemble suits of armor,” glass-domed hydroponic farms, water mining and oxygen extraction for fuel, igloo-shaped huts, and even railways. 

“The human race is remarkably fortunate in having so near at hand a full-sized world with which to experiment,” Clarke wrote. “Before we aim at the planets, we will have had a chance of perfecting our techniques on our satellite.” 

Since Clarke’s detailed moon base musings, PopSci has frequently covered the latest prospects in lunar stations, yet the last time anyone even set foot on the moon was December 1972. Despite past false starts, like the Constellation Program in the early 2000s, NASA’s Artemis program aims to change moon base calculus. This time, experts say that the air—and attitude—surrounding NASA’s latest bid for the moon is charged with a different kind of determination. 

“You can talk to anyone in the [space] community,” says Adrienne Dove, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. “You can talk to the folks who have been around for 50 years, or the new folks, but it just feels real this time.” Dove’s optimism doesn’t just come from the Artemis 1 rocket poised for liftoff at Kennedy Space Center. She sees myriad differentiating factors this time, including the collaboration between private companies and NASA, the growing international support for the space governance framework, the Artemis Accords, and the competition from rival nations like China and Russia to stake out a lunar presence. Perhaps one of the biggest arguments from moon base supporters is the need for a stepping stone to send humans even deeper into space. “We want to learn how to live on the moon so we can go to Mars,” Dove says.  

[Related: How Tiangong station will make China a force in the space race]

Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut who returned to Earth in March 2022 after spending a US record-breaking 355 consecutive days on the International Space Station (ISS), underscores the opportunity. “We’ve got this planetary object, the moon, not too far away. And we can buy down the huge risk of going to Mars by learning how to live for long durations on another planetary object that’s relatively close.”

Ever since Sputnik made its debut as the first artificial satellite in 1957, the Soviet Union deployed several short-lived space stations; NASA’s Apollo Missions enabled humans to walk on the moon; NASA’s space shuttle fleet (now retired) flew 135 missions; the ISS has been orbiting the Earth for more than two decades; more than 4,500 artificial satellites now sweep through the sky; and a series of private companies, like SpaceX and Blue Origin, have begun launching rockets and delivering payloads into space. 

But no moon base. 

That’s because exploring the moon is not like exploring the Earth. Besides being 240,000 miles away on a trajectory that requires slicing through dense atmosphere while escaping our planet’s gravitational grip, and then traversing the vacuum of space, once on the moon, daily temperatures range between 250°F during the day and -208°F at night. Although there may be water in the form of ice, it will have to be mined and extracted to be useful. The oxygen deprived atmosphere is so thin it can’t shield human inhabitants from meteor impacts of all sizes or solar radiation. There’s no source of food. Plus, lunar soil, or regolith, is so fine, sharp, and electrostatically charged, it not only clogs machinery and lungs but can also cut through clothes and flesh. 

“It’s a very hostile environment,” says Dove, whose specialty is lunar dust. She’s currently working on multiple lunar missions, like Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS, which will deploy robotic landers to explore the moon in advance of humans arriving on the future crewed Artemis missions. While Dove acknowledges the habitability challenges, she’s quick to cite a range of solutions, starting with the initial tent-pitching location: the moon’s south pole. “That region seems to be rich with resources in terms of ice, which can be used as water or as fuel,” Dove says. Plus, there’s abundant sunlight on mountain peaks, where solar panels could be stationed. She adds that “there might be some rare earth elements that can be really useful.” Rare earth elements—there are 17 metals in that category—are, well, rare on Earth, yet they’re essential to electronics manufacturing. Finding them on the moon would be a boon.

A PopSci story in July 1985 detailed elaborate plans proposed by various space visionaries to colonize the moon and make use of its resources. Among the potential technologies were laboratory and habitat modules, a factory to extract water and oxygen for subsistence and fuel, and mining operations for raw moon minerals—a precious resource that could come in handy and provide income for settlers. While NASA may provide the needed boost to get a moon base going, it’s the promise of an off-world gold rush for these rare, potentially precious elements that could solidify and expand it. 

“My hope is that this is just the beginning of a commercial venture on the Moon,” Vande Hei says. He’s looking forward to seeing how businesses will find ways to be profitable by making use of resources on the moon. “At some point, we’ve got to be able to travel and not rely on the logistics chain starting from Earth,” Vande Hei adds, taking the long view. “We’ve got to be able to travel places and use the resources.”

[Related: Space tourism is on the rise. Can NASA keep up with it?]

And space is lucrative. In 2020, the global space industry generated roughly $370 billion in revenues, a figure based mostly on building rockets and satellites, along with the supporting hardware and software. Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, estimates that the industry could generate $1 trillion in revenue in less than two decades, a growth rate predicted to be driven in no small part by the US military’s new Space Command branch. But those rising numbers mostly reflect economic activity in Earth’s orbit and what it might take to get set up on the moon—but they do not reflect the potential to begin converting the moon into an economic powerhouse. What happens next is anyone’s guess. The big dollar signs are one reason, no doubt, that the tech moguls behind private ventures like SpaceX and Blue Origin are investing heavily in space now.

The progress towards deeper space travel—and potential long-term human colonization on the moon or beyond—begs for larger ethical and moral conversations. “It’s a little bit Wild West-y,” says Dove. Although the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the more recent Artemis Accords strive “to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for all of humanity to enjoy,” according to NASA’s website, there are no rules or regulations, for instance, to govern activities like mining or extracting from the moon valuable rare earth elements for private profit. “There’s a number of people looking at the policy implications and figuring out how we start putting in place policies and ethics rules before all of this happens,” Dove adds. But, if the moon does not cough up its own version of unobtanium—the priceless element mined in the film Avatar—or if regulations are too draconian, it will be difficult for a nascent moon-economy to sustain itself before larger and more promising planetary outposts, like Mars, come to fruition and utilize its resources. After all, the building and sustainability costs and effort have been leading obstacles of establishing a moon base ever since the Apollo program spurred interest in more concrete plans.

Dove’s not really worried that private companies will pull out of the space sector—there’s little doubt they will find a way to profit. Rather, she views politics as the moon base program’s chief vulnerability. “Politics always concerns me with any of these big endeavors,” she adds. Not only domestic politics but international politics will be at play. “We see that with the ISS.”

As a retired military officer who was living on the ISS with Russian cosmonauts when Russia invaded Ukraine, Vande Hei also worries about international conflicts derailing space programs. “If we have a world war in Europe, if we’re just struggling to exist [on Earth], exploring space is not going to be at the top of the priority list.” But he also sees a bright side. He views international competition—or a moon base race—as a healthy way to create a sense of urgency. Vande Hei estimates that “a moon base is something we could do within [this] generation.”

Dove also sees the opportunities that laboratory facilities on the moon could open up for future space research—including her own. “The moon is very interesting in terms of understanding the history of Earth,” she says. “I would love to go do science on the moon.”

The post Is it finally time for a permanent base on the moon? appeared first on Popular Science.

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If a meteoroid crashes into a planet, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, if NASA’s Mars InSight lander is near by, it just might pick it up. The spacecraft has detected the seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021. These are the first impacts detected by InSight’s seismometer since it landed on Mars in November 2018 and marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on the Red Planet.

A paper published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience details the Martian impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles from InSight’s location. InSight is in a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia, a smooth flat land just north of the planet’s equator.

The first of the four confirmed meteoroids (a space rock before it hits the ground) made the most dramatic entrance, according to NASA. It entered Mars’ atmosphere just over a year ago on September 5, 2021 and exploded into at least three shards that each left a crater behind.

[Related: NASA’s new Mars lander is in for ‘seven minutes of terror’ on Monday.]

To confirm the location, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site and used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these points of impact, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE) to get a color close-up of the craters. While it is possible that the meteoroid could have left additional craters on the planet’s surface, they would be too small to see in the images taken by HiRISE.

NASA released a recording of the Martian meteoroid making impact, where Star Wars-esque “bloop” sounds are heard three times as the meteoroid enters the atmosphere, explodes into pieces, and slams into the surface.

“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts, in a press release. The team confirmed three other impacts had occurred. One on May 27, 2020 and two others on February 18 and August 31, 2021.

Mars is right next to our solar system’s main asteroid belt, which caused researchers to wonder why they haven’t detected more of these meteoroid impacts on the Red Planet. More meteoroids pass through Mars’ atmosphere without disintegrating since it is only about one percent as thick as Earth’s.

InSight’s seismometer, was provided by French space agency the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), has detected over 1,300 marsquakes. CNES is one of a number of European partners supporting on the InSight mission, including the and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

The seismometer is so sensitive that it can detect seismic waves from thousands of miles away. The dramatic meteoroid that hit Mars in September 2021 marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of the seismic waves. InSight’s team suspects that noise from wind or by seasonal changes in Mars’ atmosphere may have obscured the noise from other impacts. Scientists expect to find more hiding within InSight’s nearly four years of data, now that the seismic signature of an impact on the Red Planet has been discovered.

[Related: NASA has officially detected ‘marsquakes’ on the Red Planet.]

Scientists are looking at Martian seismic data for clues that will help them better understand the planet. Most marsquakes are caused by subsurface rocks cracking from heat and pressure, and studying how how the resulting seismic waves change as they move through different material will help scientist study Mars’ crust, mantle, and core. The four confirmed meteoroid impacts produced small quakes (no more than a magnitude of 2.0). Those smaller quakes provide scientists with a glimpse into the Martian crust. However, the seismic signals from larger quakes (a magnitude 5 event occurred in May 2022) can tell scientists more about Mars’ mantle and core.

These impact events will also be critical in refining Mars’ timeline and history. “Impacts are the clocks of the solar system,” said French lead author Raphael Garcia of from the Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space in Toulouse, in a statement. “We need to know the impact rate today to estimate the age of different surfaces.”

InSight’s data will help researchers analyze the trajectory and size of the shock wave produced when the meteoroid enters the atmosphere and once it hits the ground. “We’re learning more about the impact process itself,” Garcia said. “We can match different sizes of craters to specific seismic and acoustic waves now.”

The lander’s mission is rapidly coming to an end, as dust buildup on its solar panels is reducing its power will eventually lead to the spacecraft shutting down. According to NASA, predicting precisely when it will shut down is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers believe the InSight lander could shut down between October 2022 and January 2023.

The post Listen: Meteoroids make little ‘bloop’ noises when crashing into Mars appeared first on Popular Science.

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The word astrobiology might conjure up images of aliens like the squeaky, claw-fearing aliens from the Toy Story franchise, Star Trek’s logical Vulcan Spock, or the hungry Grogu from The Mandalorian. But the first real signs of life and evolution in the universe will most likely come from microbes and rocks.

Astrobiology is also a key objective for NASA’s Perseverance rover’s current mission. One of the key initiatives of the mission that began when the rover was launched in 2020 is capturing samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The space car is into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Scientists have long believed that this 28 mile-wide crater could be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta within the crater since July 7, bringing the total number of “scientifically compelling” rock samples from the mission to 12.

“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington, in a press release. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”

[Related: Happy Mars-iversary, Perseverance.]

3.5 billion years ago, the Jezero Crater was home to an ancient delta, or a fan-shaped area once at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is looking at the delta’s sedimentary rocks, which formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery river. The rover explored the floor of the crater during its first science campaign, in 2021, and found igneous rock which form deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the planet’s surface.

“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks—formed from crystallization of magma—discovered on the crater floor,” Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California said in a press release. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater—and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”

Within the crater, Wildcat Ridge is a rock about 3 feet wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. The rover scraped some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge on July 20 to analyze the area with the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC).

SHERLOC’s analysis show that the Martian rock samples feature a “class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals.” These sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can provide inside into the watery worlds in which they formed.

Organic molecules are made up of a wide variety of compounds, but they are primarily made of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Some organic compounds are the actual chemical building blocks of life, and the presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature. These biosignatures are a substance or structure that is possible evidence of past life, but may also have been produced without the presence of life.

[Related: Is there life on Mars? TBD. But scientists found ancient organic matter in the Red Planet’s rocks.]

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples in 2013 and Perseverance detected organics in Jezero Crater in 2021.

“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock—known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth—is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”

In September 2021, the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample. The rover has since collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.

The post NASA’s Perseverance rover is on a hunt for microbes on Mars appeared first on Popular Science.

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