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Category: space – Page 484

Study reveals lunar soil can support plant growth

The chemical composition and presence of metallic fragments also make lunar soil-less suitable for plant growth as compared to volcanic ash. However, the biggest takeaway from this experiment is still that scientists have somehow grown a plant in a soil sample taken from the Moon.

Emphasizing the importance of this result co-author and geologist Stephen Elardo said, from a geology standpoint, I look at this soil as being very very different from any soil you will find here on Earth. I think it’s amazing the plant still grows, right. It’s stressed, but it doesn’t die. It doesn’t fail to grow at all, it adapts.

The researchers also highlight that further research can enable us to know the ways plants can be efficiently grown on the Moon. Therefore, through related studies, we need to better understand how Earth plants interact with lunar soil.

Superconducting X-ray laser reaches operating temperature colder than outer space

Nestled 30 feet underground in Menlo Park, California, a half-mile-long stretch of tunnel is now colder than most of the universe. It houses a new superconducting particle accelerator, part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Crews have successfully cooled the accelerator to minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit—or 2 Kelvin—a temperature at which it becomes superconducting and can boost electrons to high energies with nearly zero energy lost in the process. It is one of the last milestones before LCLS-II will produce X-ray pulses that are 10,000 times brighter, on average, than those of LCLS and that arrive up to a million times per second—a world record for today’s most powerful X-ray light sources.

“In just a few hours, LCLS-II will produce more X-ray pulses than the current laser has generated in its entire lifetime,” says Mike Dunne, director of LCLS. “Data that once might have taken months to collect could be produced in minutes. It will take X-ray science to the next level, paving the way for a whole new range of studies and advancing our ability to develop revolutionary technologies to address some of the most profound challenges facing our society.”

James Webb Space Telescope enters ‘homestretch’ of commissioning with stunning image

We’ve never seen a neighboring galaxy like this before.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is sharper than ever in the infrared eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.

As the $10 billion observatory enters the “homestretch” of its commissioning work, according to officials, Webb’s latest image showed off the telescope’s literally stellar performance using its coldest instrument, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Astronomers discover asteroid treasure trove in old Hubble Space Telescope data

Astronomers have revealed the trails of nearly 1,500 new asteroids hidden in data gathered by NASA’s most venerable space telescope.

In a new study, astronomers and a team of amateur scientists have worked together to comb through archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The project began on International Asteroid Day in 2019, when a team of astronomers launched the “Hubble Asteroid Hunter” project on Zooniverse, a popular platform for crowdsourcing science. The project’s aim was to identify asteroids in old data from Hubble; signals that, in other studies, might have just been filtered out as noise.

Meet some of the oldest “undead” spacecraft that are still going strong

Time will tell if more effective strategies can be developed to manage space junk in the future. But, as you are about to find out, we may not want to clear up space entirely.

Some of these “dead” spacecraft may still function!

1. Voyager 1 and 2 are still going strong.

Perhaps the most famous example of old spacecraft still in use today are Voyager 1 and 2. By far the farthest-traveled human-made objects ever sent into space, these amazing pieces of kit are still faithfully sending data back to Earth.