Category Astronomy/Space

The Dragonfly dual-quadcopter could make multiple flights to explore diverse locations as it characterizes the habitability of Titan’s environment.
Credit: APL/Mike Carroll

Dragonfly, a New Frontiers-class mission concept that the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has proposed to NASA, would use an instrumented, radioisotope-powered, dual-quadcopter to explore potential habitable sites where life could be developed on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The moon is one of a number of “ocean worlds” in our solar system that hold the ingredients for life, and is known to be covered with rich organic material that is undergoing chemical processes that might be similar to those on early Earth, before life developed.

Titan has diverse, carbon-rich chemistry on a surface dominated by water ice...

This raw 3-D printed ploymeric material known as Kapton, created and printed at Virginia Tech, might one day be used in space vehicles or satellites because of its ability to withstand high temperatures. Credit: Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech researchers have created a novel way to 3D print the type of high-temperature polymeric materials commonly used to insulate spacecraft and satellites from extreme heat and cold. Previously, the polyimide could previously be made only in sheets. The material, formally known as Kapton, is an aromatic polymer composed of carbons and hydrogens in benzene rings, which provides exceptional thermal and chemical stability. But because of this molecular structure, the material is notoriously difficult to produce in any format other than thin sheets...

Possible spectroscopy results from one of Europa’s water plumes. This is an example of the data the Webb telescope could return. Credits: NASA-GSFC/SVS, Hubble Space Telescope, Stefanie Milam, Geronimo Villanueva This spectra was created using NASA’s Planetary Spectrum Generator

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will use its capabilities to study the “ocean worlds” of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, adding to observations previously made by NASA’s Galileo and Cassini orbiters. The Webb telescope’s observations could also help guide future missions to the icy moons.

Europa and Enceladus are on the Webb telescope’s list of targets chosen by guaranteed time observers, scientists who helped develop the telescope and thus get to be among the first to use it to observe the...

A bright member of the Phoenicid meteor shower appears at the bottom left of this photo taken at 02h15m39s UT on December 2, 2014. The Moon is captured to the lower right of center in the photo. Camera: Pentax K-3 + SIGMA 4.5mm F2.8, 3 second exposure time, at Sandy Point, North Carolina, U.S.A.. Credit: Hiroyuki Toda, NAOJ

The Phoenicid meteor shower (named after the constellation Phoenix) was discovered by the first Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition on December 5, 1956, during their voyage in the Indian Ocean. However, it has not been observed again. This has left astronomers with a mystery: where did the Phoenicids come from and where did they go?

Two Japanese teams have found an answer to these questions by linking the Phoenicid meteor shower to a vanished celestial body, Comet Bl...