How can scientists track space junk after it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and impacts the ground? This is what a recent study published in Science ho | Space
Category: space
NASA’s Juno measures thickness of Europa’s ice shell
Data from NASA’s Juno mission has provided new insights into the thickness and subsurface structure of the icy shell encasing Jupiter’s moon Europa. Using the spacecraft’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR), mission scientists determined that the shell averages about 18 miles (29 kilometers) thick in the region observed during Juno’s 2022 flyby of Europa. The Juno measurement is the first to discriminate between thin and thick shell models that have suggested the ice shell is anywhere from less than half a mile to tens of miles thick.
Slightly smaller than Earth’s moon, Europa is one of the solar system’s highest-priority science targets for investigating habitability. Evidence suggests that the ingredients for life may exist in the saltwater ocean that lies beneath its ice shell. Uncovering a variety of characteristics of the ice shell, including its thickness, provides crucial pieces of the puzzle for understanding the moon’s internal workings and the potential for the existence of a habitable environment.
The new estimate on the ice thickness in the near-surface icy crust was published on Dec. 17 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Thinking on different wavelengths: New approach to circuit design introduces next-level quantum computing
Quantum computing represents a potential breakthrough technology that could far surpass the technical limitations of modern-day computing systems for some tasks. However, putting together practical, large-scale quantum computers remains challenging, particularly because of the complex and delicate techniques involved.
In some quantum computing systems, single ions (charged atoms such as strontium) are trapped and exposed to electromagnetic fields including laser light to produce certain effects, used to perform calculations. Such circuits require many different wavelengths of light to be introduced into different positions of the device, meaning that numerous laser beams have to be properly arranged and delivered to the designated area. In these cases, the practical limitations of delivering many different beams of light around within a limited space become a difficulty.
To address this, researchers from The University of Osaka investigated unique ways to deliver light in a limited space. Their work revealed a power-efficient nanophotonic circuit with optical fibers attached to waveguides to deliver six different laser beams to their destinations. The findings have been published in APL Quantum.
NASA Launches Its Most Powerful, Efficient Supercomputer
NASA is announcing the availability of its newest supercomputer, Athena, an advanced system designed to support a new generation of missions and research projects. The newest member of the agency’s High-End Computing Capability project expands the resources available to help scientists and engineers tackle some of the most complex challenges in space, aeronautics, and science.
Housed in the agency’s Modular Supercomputing Facility at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, Athena delivers more computing power than any other NASA system, surpassing the capabilities of its predecessors, Aitken and Pleiades, in power and efficiency. The new system, which was rolled out in January to existing users after a beta testing period, delivers over 20 petaflops of peak performance – a measurement of the number of calculations it can make per second – while reducing the agency’s supercomputing utility costs.
“Exploration has always driven NASA to the edge of what’s computationally possible,” said Kevin Murphy, chief science data officer and lead for the agency’s High-End Computing Capability portfolio at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now with Athena, NASA will expand its efforts to provide tailored computing resources that meet the evolving needs of its missions.”
Astronomers just revealed a stunning new view of the Milky Way in radio colors
A groundbreaking new radio image reveals the Milky Way in more detail than ever before, using low-frequency radio “colors” to map the galaxy’s hidden structures. The image is sharper, deeper, and wider than anything previously released, uncovering both star-forming regions and the remains of ancient stellar explosions. Scientists can now better distinguish where stars are being born versus where they’ve met dramatic ends. The discovery opens powerful new ways to study the life cycle of stars and the shape of our galaxy.
$99,000 smart observatory captures the cosmos with Canon optics
One would think that a US$99,000 telescope requires specialist training and a thick instruction manual. But the new Hyperia from French company Vaonis flips that assumption on its head. It’s powerful enough for professional observatories yet runs entirely from a simple smartphone app.
Vaonis has been bringing astrophotography to the masses for years now. The company has stripped away the complexity, allowing anyone to snap spectacular images of galaxies and nebulae hundreds of light-years away without wrestling with multi-component setups requiring serious technical chops – all wrapped in Vaonis’s trademark minimalist design.
The Hyperia started as a custom build for the Palais de la Découverte in Paris, which needed a next-gen digital observatory. After wrapping up the installation, Vaonis saw the bigger picture and decided to sell the system commercially.
A white dwarf’s cosmic feeding frenzy revealed by NASA
Using NASA’s IXPE, astronomers captured an unprecedented view of a white dwarf star actively feeding on material from a companion. The data revealed giant columns of ultra-hot gas shaped by the star’s magnetic field and glowing in intense X-rays. These features are far too small to image directly, but X-ray polarization allowed scientists to map them with surprising precision. The results open new doors for understanding extreme binary star systems.
Scientists have, for the first time, used NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarization Explorer) to investigate a white dwarf star. The mission’s ability to measure the polarization of X-rays allowed astronomers to closely examine EX Hydrae, a type of system known as an intermediate polar. These observations provided new insight into the physical structure and behavior of powerful binary star systems.
During 2024, IXPE spent nearly a full week observing EX Hydrae. This white dwarf system lies about 200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra. The results of the study were published in the Astrophysical Journal. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge led the work, with additional contributors from the University of Iowa, East Tennessee State University, the University of Liége, and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
The shape of things to come: How spheroid geometry guides multicellular orbiting and invasion
As organisms develop from embryos, groups of cells migrate and reshape themselves to form all manner of complex tissues. There are no anatomical molds shaped like lungs, livers or other tissues for cells to grow into. Rather, these structures form through the coordinated activity of different types of cells as they move and multiply.
No one is sure exactly how cells manage this collective construction of complex tissue, but a study by Brown University engineers could offer some new insights.
The study, published in Nature Physics, looked at how human epithelial cells behave as spherical aggregates confined inside a collagen matrix. The research revealed surprising ways in which cell clusters first rotate collectively within the confined space, then eventually reconfigure their surroundings to allow individual cells to venture out of the sphere.
Reentry and disintegration dynamics of space debris tracked using seismic data
Therefore, there is a pressing need to develop tools that can be used to determine the trajectory, size, nature, and potential impact locations of reentering debris in near real time. This is a critical step toward mobilizing appropriate response operations (7). In this work, we have demonstrated that open-source seismic data are capable of fulfilling this requirement.
Past work has demonstrated the sensitivity of seismometers to reentry-generated shockwaves and explosions of natural meteoroids [for example, (8–10)]. However, the trajectories, speeds, and fragmentation chains of artificial spacecraft falling from orbit are distinct from those of natural objects entering from beyond the Earth‒Moon system. This means that the patterns of debris fallout that artificial spacecraft produce are also potentially more complex; for example, some components such as fuel tanks are structurally reinforced and hence more likely to survive and impact the ground, whereas others (such as solar panels) are deliberately designed to demise during reentry. Therefore, techniques used for natural objects require modification.