Discoveries in and Around Space There is a satellite and it is only the size of a microwave, but what it is about to do could make getting to the moon easier. Its name is Capstone and it is what is called a cubesat. Cubesats are small probes and satellites. Its name stands for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment. Wow, what a mouthful. Its destination is a special orbit around the moon for Gateway, which will support missions for the Artemis program. It will use a gravity driven approach to the moon which will take four months to reach it destination, but will save significantly on fuel. This will make launching objects, which are in no hurry to reach the moon, cheaper to launch. NASA has been studying the expansion rate of the universe using the Hubble telescope for a long time and astronomers using other instruments before that even much longer. NASA has found something very unexpected and it is the rate of expansion is much faster now that what was to be expected. NASA has not found the reason for this and called the phenomenon something weird. One of the things which was noticed was how fast other galaxies are moving away from us. NASA has figured the current rate of expansion and it is about 73 kilometers per second or about 45.4 miles a second. Can you imagine the problem creating maps, the distances would always be changing. All one could do would be to list the distance and list the date and anyone using the map in the future would have to recalculate the distance and add in the additional distance in the time it takes the spacecraft to reach its target. Of course, I am sure there will be software which will easily do this. Sometimes what is old becomes new. Remember the WOW signal which was picked up by SETI and could not be reacquired? There is something new about this. The WOW signal was discovered in 1977 and recently an article stated a scientist may have pinpointed where the WOW signal came from. The study was published in The International Journal of Astrobiology. It suggests the signal came from a star located in the Sagittarius constellation and it said there is a sun there which is similar to our own. Could we have located a civilization which sent out a message, and if so, the signal traveled about 74 light years to reach us, which is right next to us in cosmic terms. Should we beam a signal back into that area? The signal was never detected again even though its location seems to have been found. Ultracold bubbles have been found in space and this is exciting scientists. The reason being it could open up new avenues in quantum research according to one article. Scientists have found when some exotic materials are in mini-gravity and cooled down to within a millionth of a degree above absolute zero, such as gas, they form a round sphere and it can be sculpted into a thin shell. Scientists are thinking about using this experiment with newly discovered material which form a fifth state of matter. Scientists think they have found out something they never suspected and it concerns small galaxies which orbit larger ones. They think the small galaxies, or at least some of them, have developed thin walls made of a new class of particles called symmetrons. This would open the door to a new type of physics. The current theory would be in a lot of trouble as it only allows for the existence of three key elements to exist which are the cosmological constant, cold dark matter and the conventional matter we are privy to on a daily basis. This is over my head so I will leave it at that. One of the new theories being put out there is gravity was much stronger in the early universe. Research has shown this could have been possible. Some are saying stronger gravity in early epochs is inevitable. There is a glow in a distant galaxy and it is surging. The galaxy is 1ES 1927+654. The black hole in the galaxy went through a change. It grew a lot brighter after already being very bright. It is said to belong to a class of black holes known as active galactic nuclei or AGN. No one knew why this happened. An international team of astrophysicists investigated and believes they may have found the answer. They found the magnetic lines going through the black hole have flipped upside down. They believe the change will be short lived. NASA’s Webb telescope had some very optimistic ideas about its resolution put forward. Even though they were so optimistic, the telescope has smashed those ideas by being even better than anyone thought it could be. Soon the telescope will be put in full service and we can expect some spectacular photos coming from it. These photos and other data could change the way we think about the universe. I personally can’t wait for it to get into full operation. NASA has said it planned 8 planetary missions. They were each reviewed by over 50 scientists and engineers to determine if they could bring us new discoveries and apparently it seems the reviewers thought these missions had the best chance to do that. NASA has said its OSIRIS-REX will continue for the next nine years and is on its way back to earth with samples from the asteroid Bennu. Let’s hope there are no viruses there. As I have said many times, I am against bringing samples back to earth and they should be brought to a lab on the space station or later to the moon when we have a base there. In the meantime, the same probe will fly near the asteroid Apophis to study it. MAVEN will go to and study Mars. InSight will study seismic events on Mars. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will continue to study the surface of the moon. The Mars Science Laboratory will conduct a fourth extended mission on Mars. The Mars Odyssey mission will provide a communications relay for robots on Mars. New Horizons will continue to explore the Solar System. As we continue our exploration of space with probes and study it with more and more powerful instruments, we are finding out some things are not what we thought they were. It is going to be very interesting to see where all this leads us in our understanding of space and the universe. One of these discoveries could be earth shattering. I don’t mean that literally.
|
