Further studies of the meteorite are in peril, though.
A meteorite that fell in Somalia in 2020 is home to at least two minerals that are not found on our planet. The two minerals were identified by researchers at the University of Alberta, a press release said.
Large meteorites are rare but do occur, such as the one that fell near the town of El Ali in Somalia a couple of years ago. The celestial piece of rock weighs a massive 16.
University of Alberta.
“Our primary goals for the program are to advance techniques to detect previously unknown objects through search and discovery, to detect small or distant objects and to study spacecraft positioning and navigation in the [beyond GEO] realm,” Oracle’s principal investigator James Frith said in a Nov. 10 statement.
The contract for Oracle, which was previously named the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, comes amid a growing interest in the cislunar environment and increasing concerns about potential deep-space threats from adversaries like China. In response, AFRL and other stakeholders are crafting a classified roadmap that lays out the cislunar capabilities various space agencies are pursuing.
AFRL expects Oracle to launch in 2025 and have a two-year mission life. Along with tracking and detecting new objects, the satellite will inform a separate AFRL effort to develop a green propellant to power space vehicles. The satellite will carry a refueling port for the Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic program.
NASA said Orion is the safest spacecraft in the NASA fleet.
The technological advancements in imaging over the past 20 years are really paying off in space. From Hubble Space Telescope to James Webb, the Perseverance Mars Rover, and now NASA’s Orion spacecraft, a stream of amazing images from space parade before us.
Images are just the beginning
The Orion images capture what it’s like to see Earth from a distance, a great distance. Even the best cameras need to be enhanced for this type of imaging, and Orion is up to that task, and the task of bringing humans back to the Moon.
The absence of the 21-centimeter hydrogen line allowed scientists to determine specific properties of the earliest galaxies in the universe.
An international group of astronomers, led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, just shed new light on the cosmic dawn of the universe, a press statement reveals.
The cosmic dawn is a very early period of the universe, during which the first stars and galaxies formed. The researchers used data from India’s SARAS3 radio telescope to analyze this period of the cosmos and determine mass and energy output limits for the first stars and galaxies.
Today, Mars is colloquially known as the ‘Red Planet’ on account of how its dry, dusty landscape is rich in iron oxide (aka. ‘rust’). In addition, the atmosphere is extremely thin and cold, and no water can exist on the surface in any form other than ice.
But as the Martian landscape and other lines of evidence attest, Mars was once a very different place, with a warmer, denser atmosphere and flowing water on its surface.
For years, scientists have attempted to determine how long natural bodies existed on Mars and whether or not they were intermittent or persistent.
The rover is expected to be larger than the two China-operated rovers on the Moon earlier. Wu claimed that nuclear energy could also be used to power the hopper, a machine intended to lift off from the lunar surface numerous times and bounce in and out of a crater’s constantly shadowed section in search of water.
Nuclear energy will support the station’s communications facilities to maintain communication with Earth and power the station’s communications systems. It will also stay connected to the Earth and relay signals between the Earth, Mars, and deep space. China has also announced its desire to explore deep space.
“China was the first country to propose building such a research station at the lunar South Pole,” Wu said. At the latitude of about 89 degrees south, he said there could be 180 consecutive days of light to sustain extended operations for both instruments and astronauts.
The merging of two neutron stars emits both light and gravitational waves at the same time, so if gravity and light have the same speed, they should be detected on Earth at the same time. Given the distance of the galaxy that housed these two neutron stars, we know that the two types of waves had traveled for about 130 million years and arrived within two seconds of one another.
So, that’s the answer. Gravity and light travel at the same speed, determined by a precise measurement. It validates Einstein once again, and it hints at something profound about the nature of space. Scientists hope one day to fully understand why these two very different phenomena have identical speeds.
The latest data improves our understanding of how clouds in “hot Jupiter” exoplanets like this might appear up close. They are likely to be broken up, rather than a single, uniform blanket over the planet.
Photochemistry is the result of light triggering chemical reactions. This process is fundamental to life on Earth: it makes ozone, for example, which protects us from harsh ultraviolet (UV) rays.
New observations of WASP-39 b, a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a Sun-like star found 700 light years away, confirm the presence of a never-before-seen molecule in the atmosphere – sulfur dioxide – among other details.
The James Webb Space Telescope has previously studied WASP-39 b. In August, it captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide. Now, it has focused its array of highly sensitive instruments on the planet once again, revealing not just an isolated ingredient, but a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds in the broiling atmosphere. This latest data, far more detailed than any previous telescope, shows the amazing capabilities of Webb, and hints at the potential for future discoveries that may reveal biosignatures.
