Category Astronomy/Space

The crystal structure of magnesium peroxide, MgO2, courtesy of Sergey Lobanov, created using K. Momma’s program for drawing crystal structures. Credit: Sergey Lobanov 

New Carnegie research demonstrates different magnesium compounds could be abundant inside other planets as compared to Earth. O and Mg are the two most-abundant elements in Earth’s mantle. However, when predicting the chemical compositions of rocky, terrestrial planets outside of our own Solar System, they shouldn’t assume that other rocky planets would have Earth-like mantle mineralogy, according to Carnegie’s Sergey Lobanov, Nicholas Holtgrewe, and Alexander Goncharov.

Eg. elevated oxygen contents have been observed in stars that host rocky planets...

Path of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft toward its next potential target, the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, nicknamed “PT1” (for “Potential Target 1”) by the New Horizons team. NASA must approve any New Horizons extended mission to explore a KBO. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker

The next destination for the New Horizons mission to visit after its historic July 14 flyby of the Pluto system is likely a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.

The team needs to direct New Horizons toward the object this year in order to perform any extended mission with healthy fuel margins...

Journey To Mars

Learn about our real Journey To Mars  and Asteroid as well.

The film “The Martian” takes the work NASA and others have done exploring Mars and extends it into fiction set in the 2030s, when NASA astronauts are regularly traveling to Mars and living on the surface. NASA has collaborated on this film with 20th Century Fox Entertainment, providing guidance on production design and technical consultants

So whats happening in real life? NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s. NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples...

A “radio phoenix” has been discovered using X-ray, radio, and optical data. This system contains the collision of two galaxy clusters located about 1.6 billion light years from Earth. The collision re-energized a regeneration of vast clouds of high-energy particles that primarily radiate at radio frequencies. Understanding how galaxy clusters grow over time, including through collisions, is important for cosmology. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Hamburg/F. de Gasperin et al; Optical: SDSS; Radio: NRAO/VLA

Astronomers have found evidence for a faded electron cloud “coming back to life,” like the phoenix, after 2 galaxy clusters collided. This “radio phoenix,” so-called because the high-energy electrons radiate primarily at radio frequencies, is found in Abell 1033. The system is located about 1...