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Super blood wolf moon delights skygazers lucky enough to be under clear skies

By Press Association Reporters       5 hrs ago

BBSwkUO.img?h=509&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

© Peter Byrne The super blood wolf moon was seen over Liverpool (Peter Byrne/PA)

Skygazers in parts of the UK lucky enough to be under clear skies have been treated to the astronomical spectacle of a “super blood wolf moon”.

The rare phenomenon, caused in part by a lunar eclipse, makes the surface of the moon appear a reddish hue while seeming brighter and closer to earth than normal.

Catching a glimpse of the curiously-titled event will be down to luck for those wrapping up and heading out early, as many parts of the country were covered by cloud on Monday morning.

 

Met Office forecaster Mark Wilson said: “There’s a lot cloud around, but there are some breaks to enjoy the lunar eclipse as well.

“Across lots of central England and northern England there’s quite a lot of lower cloud around, but there are still some breaks in cloud particularly over south-east England and parts of south-west England as well.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/super-blood-wolf-moon-delights-skygazers-lucky-enough-to-be-under-clear-skies/ar-BBSwdfE?ocid=chromentp#image=1

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21 minutes ago, nudge said:

It was not visible in my part of the world :( Would have loved to take a few pics..

I got up for the loo about 05:00 odds and the bathroom window was aglow, nipped into the back room and looked out the window but there was cloud around but the night sky was glowing, pity as I would have loved to see that and I would have taken a few photos.  

 

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'Super blood wolf moon' in Scotland

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Skygazers across Scotland have caught a glimpse of the astronomical spectacle of a "super blood wolf moon".

The rare phenomenon, caused in part by a lunar eclipse, makes the surface of the moon appear red while seeming brighter and closer to earth than normal.

Enthusiasts wrapped up and went out early on Monday morning to see the moon, with the optimum viewing time at 05:12 when the eclipse was at its peak.

While the supermoon and blood moon titles come from the brightness and reddish hue respectively, a full moon in January is sometimes called a "wolf" moon.

(More Photos >>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46944502

 

 

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Planet Nine is not real but there's something else strange on the edge of our solar system, scientists say

BBSy3tw.img?h=449&w=754&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

© Provided by Independent Digital News & Media Limited

Scientists think they have found the cause of mysterious movements at the edge of our solar system – and it is not Planet Nine.

At the very edge of our neighborhood, some objects appear to be orbiting in an unusual way that suggests something entirely unexpected is happening, without our knowledge.

Various scientists have suggested that could be the consequence of a huge hidden planet, ten times the size of Earth, hiding in the darkness in the distant reaches of the solar system. No such object has ever been discovered, but it has been hypothesized because of the unusual way objects we can see are moving around.

But now a new paper suggests an entirely different explanation: there is a disc made up of small icy bodies that put together is as much as ten times as massive as the Earth.

That explanation appears to account for the unusual orbits that can be seen in some objects in the distant solar system, the researchers claim.

The study would also help explain why we are yet to see Planet Nine, despite intensive searches for it.

"The Planet Nine hypothesis is a fascinating one, but if the hypothesised ninth planet exists, it has so far avoided detection," said co-author Antranik Sefilian, a PhD student in Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. "We wanted to see whether there could be another, less dramatic and perhaps more natural, cause for the unusual orbits we see in some [of the distant objects].

"We thought, rather than allowing for a ninth planet, and then worry about its formation and unusual orbit, why not simply account for the gravity of small objects constituting a disc beyond the orbit of Neptune and see what it does for us?"

Scientists plugged that possibility into a model of our solar system and found that it appeared to explain the unusual movement of those distant objects.

The researchers admit that they have no more direct evidence of the disc than of Planet Nine. But the search is complicated by the fact that it is harder to see the properties of our own solar system, compared with those that we are looking at from the outside.

"When observing other systems, we often study the disc surrounding the host star to infer the properties of any planets in orbit around it," said Sefilian.

"The problem is when you're observing the disc from inside the system, it's almost impossible to see the whole thing at once. While we don't have direct observational evidence for the disc, neither do we have it for Planet Nine, which is why we're investigating other possibilities. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that observations of Kuiper belt analogues around other stars, as well as planet formation models, reveal massive remnant populations of debris.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/science/planet-nine-is-not-real-but-theres-something-else-strange-on-the-edge-of-our-solar-system-scientists-say/ar-BBSy0fg

 

 

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A meteor hit the moon during the lunar eclipse. Here's what we know.

Maya Wei-Haas

On Sunday, January 20, viewers across the Western Hemisphere were treated to the rusty hues of the decade's last “blood moon” eclipse. But as people across the planet watched the moon glow crimson, some lucky observers caught an unexpected delight: the flash of a space rock striking the lunar orb.

“It's a rare alignment of infrequent events,” says Justin Cowart, a Ph.D. candidate at Stony Brook University in New York. “A [meteoroid] about this size hits the moon about once a week or so,” he says. But if this event is confirmed, it may be the first time such an impact has been recorded during a lunar eclipse.

An eagle-eyed viewer on Reddit spotted the potential impact during the eclipse and reached out to the r/space community to see if others could weigh in. The news spread quickly on social media, as people from across the path of totality posted their images and video of this tiny flicker of light.

Many scientists initially approached the claims with appropriate skepticism. After spotting the buzz on Twitter, “I was wondering if it was maybe a local effect, or maybe something with the camera,” says planetary scientist Sara Mazrouei of the University of Toronto.

Flashes of light from an impact are faint and short lived, making them easy to confuse with an errant pixel. But image after image showed the same thing: At 4:41 UT, when totality was just beginning, a tiny speck of light glinted south of the crater Byrgius, a nearly 55-mile-wide pockmark in the western part of the moon.

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© Photograph by Christian Fröschlin

A dot of white light, seen here at left, marks the spot where a meteor hit the moon during a total lunar eclipse on January 20.

“They all seem to see the same bright pixel,” Mazrouei says. This confluence points strongly toward the flash of light actually being an impact.

“This is something that people all around the world didn't know that they were going to sign up for” says Noah Petro, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Try, try again

Backyard astronomers and starstruck citizen scientists weren't the only ones watching. Jose Maria Madiedo, an astrophysicist at the University of Huelva in Spain, is co-director of the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System, MIDAS for short. He had been working overtime to get eight of the project's telescopes trained on the moon during the eclipse to watch for just such an event.

The MIDAS team usually scours the moon in search of faint flashes, the telltale signs of an impact, to learn about the array of space rocks that bombard our lunar companion. But most of these events are too dim to spot when the moon is full. The team does the bulk of their observing in the five days before and after a new moon. An eclipse, however, dulls the full moon's usually vibrant glow, providing one more rare opportunity to spot the tiny flashes of light.

So far, they hadn't successfully spotted an impact during an eclipse, but Madiedo didn't lose hope: “Something inside of me told me that this time would be the time.” And sure enough, his efforts paid off.

“I had a very nice reward,” he says.

BBSBJ8K.img?h=564&w=736&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

© Photograph by Christian Fröschlin

A close-up of the darkened face of the "blood moon" shows the flash from the meteor impact.

Making an impact

Scientists say the next steps are gathering up the many observations to study the event in full detail, and hopefully capturing an image of the moon's new crater.

“The Earth and the moon are in such close proximity that observing the impacts on the moon can help us learn a lot more about the frequency of impacts on Earth,” explains Mazrouei, who recently authored a study detailing an ancient spike in large meteor bombardment on the moon, and thus on our planet.

Though Earth's atmosphere protects us from many of the smaller space rocks zooming through the solar system, incoming meteors can still affect the array of satellites zipping around the planet that are vital to keeping navigation, telecommunications, weather forecasting, and more humming along on the surface.

And seeing the aftermath of smaller impacts on airless worlds like the moon can help scientists learn about the effects of larger strikes on all kinds of worlds—including our own, Madiedo says.

“By knowing what happens with smaller impacts, you could know what could happen with larger impacts without really studying a large impact on Earth.”

Sweeping the moon

Finding the new crater on the already pockmarked surface of the moon will take some work, though. The spacecraft vital to this process is NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Launched in 2009, the orbiter took up residence around our moon to study its surface in stunning detail. So far, it has recorded hundreds of changes to the lunar landscape, including more than two dozen new impact craters.

LRO even has history finding craters after initial reports of an impact flash. On March 17, 2013 researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center reported sighting a similar faint flicker of light on the moon. By comparing images of the moon's surface from LRO's trio of cameras before and after the event, scientists traced the debris streaks from the impact back to its associated crater.

For this latest event, the team responsible for LRO's cameras is not specifically targeting the crater in their sweeps over the moon. The orbiter essentially captures a random sampling of the moon's surface so scientists can calculate the average number of impacts over time, explains Petro, who is a project scientist for LRO. Specifically targeting the new crater would interfere with their statistical sampling.

Still, researchers can work to narrow down the new crater's location—and tease out more details about the impact itself—and then scour LRO data to see whether it passes over the right lunar section. Madiedo and his team are working to estimate the impact's energy and mass to assist in calculations of the crater's likely size and position. His initial estimates suggest that the space rock was about the size of a football, and that it left a crater around six miles across.

Stony Brook's Cowart is also trying to narrow down where the space rock struck using images from amateur astronomer Christian Fröschlin. He estimates that the crater lies around 29.47 south, 67.77 west. But accuracy is tricky; each pixel in the image represents an area about 2.5 miles across.

“So if I'm off by one pixel, then if we target that location, we can just totally miss the crater,” he says.

Regardless of whether the craft eventually captures the new crater, the series of events underscores the vital but often overlooked role social media can play in gathering data about natural phenomena, Petro says.

“I said going into the eclipse that this is really cool,” he adds. “This observation just reinforces how bloody cool it is.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/a-meteor-hit-the-moon-during-the-lunar-eclipse-heres-what-we-know/ar-BBSCqjf?ocid=chromentp

 

 

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The European Space Agency wants to mine the moon for oxygen and water

The moon may look barren, but its hidden resources have multiple space agencies eyeing its potential.

The news: This week, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced a deal with ArianeGroup, parent company of launch provider Arianespace, to study and prep a possible 2025 moon mission. The goal: mine the lunar surface for resources. They have also recruited former Google Lunar X Prize competitor PTScientists to provide the lander for the mission.

Precious moon dust: The ESA is focusing on regolith (a.k.a. lunar soil), which contains both oxygen and water. When extracted from the soil, these resources can be used to create fuel and life-support systems in space. Other countries, like China and India, have also investigated pulling helium-3 from the moon; this substance is extremely rare on Earth, but abundant there. It could be used as safer nuclear fuel to power spacecraft.

What’s next? Well, ESA still has to long way to go. This is step one in a long process. The initial contract lasts for a year and will decide whether or not this mission is feasible. That means looking at how the materials could be mined and stored on the moon and the technology that needs to be developed. The results of the study will likely be used to attempt to get funding for the full-fledged mission in 2025.

Why it matters: More space agencies are looking at space mining as they plan longer-term crewed missions away from Earth. Being able to acquire fuel and oxygen after liftoff makes for lighter takeoff loads and could enable extended stays. This year, more countries and former Lunar X Prize competitors are planning moon landings, so it could also bring interest in moon mining to the forefront once again.

https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612822/the-european-space-agency-wants-to-mine-the-moon-for-oxygen-and-water/

Permanent lunar base incoming for sure.

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40 minutes ago, nudge said:

A new photo of Ultima Thule colorised with the low-resolution MVIC color photo and slightly reinforced details. Full of small craters visible on the surface! 

You can make a face out of that with a head on a body xD

50647946_10157025483077855_8998923226423

 

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How cool is this :o 

20190109-1.jpg

 

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Dragonfly, led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL), is a concept to send a rotorcraft-lander to Saturn's exotic moon Titan.

Designed to sample surface materials and measure the compositions of Titan's organic surface materials, Dragonfly would explore a variety of locations to characterize the habitability of Titan's environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry, and even search for chemical hints of water-based or hydrocarbon-based life.

The instruments that would collect this this data are in development and being tested in Titan-like conditions at APL in Maryland and at other locations across the country.

Dragonfly is vying to become NASA's next New Frontiers-class mission. If NASA selects Dragonfly, it would launch in 2025 and reach Titan in 2034. Titan's dense, calm atmosphere and low gravity make flying an ideal way to explore – in fact, under those conditions, flight is actually easier on Titan than it is on Earth.

More on: https://dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/News-and-Resources/news/20190109.php

 

So mechanically simple and could be such an effective way of transportation on Titan! 

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This may be Earth's oldest rock—and it was collected on the moon

Michael Greshko

Scientists may have just found the oldest intact Earth rock—on the moon. A study published Thursday in Earth and Planetary Science Letters makes the case that one of the rocks collected by Apollo 14 astronauts in 1971 contains a fragment of Earth's ancient crust, dating back more than 4.011 billion years.

It's possible that the fragment formed in a weirdly water-rich pocket of magma deep within the ancient moon. But the study authors think it's likelier that the rock formed within our planet's crust and got jettisoned to the moon by one of the many meteor impacts that bombarded early Earth.

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© Photograph by NASA Technicians Linda Tyler (left), Nancy L. Trent (middle), and Sandra Richards peer through glass at a basketball-size lunar rock, formally designated 14321, plucked from the moon during the Apollo 14 mission.

If so, the fragment is one of the oldest Earth rocks ever found. The oldest minerals found on Earth come from Australia's Jack Hills and are up to 4.4 billion years old. But those dates have been disputed, and even if the minerals really are that old, they're debris left over from rocks that disintegrated long ago. By contrast, the Apollo 14 fragment is much more fully preserved.

“It is technically a 'rock,' whereas the Jack Hills [minerals] are individual, contextless crystals,” lead study author Jeremy Bellucci, a researcher at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, writes in an email.

The finding adds to the Apollo missions' decades-long scientific legacy, and it further cements the moon as the solar system's premier archivist. Since the moon is so ancient, airless, and geologically inactive, its surface records the history of impacts in the early solar system—most likely including impact debris sent there from other worlds.

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© Photograph by NASA

Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard took this photograph of the rock known as 14321 minutes before he collected it from the lunar surface.

It's thought that up to 0.5 percent of the schmutz on the lunar surface first formed on Earth, and bits and pieces of other rocky planets, such as Venus or Mars, probably litter the moon, too.

But the Apollo 14 rock, if confirmed to have earthly origins, would be the first of its kind plucked from the moon and in scientific hands.

“If that’s true, then this is quite a fascinating finding,” says Cornelia Rasmussen, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the chemistry of Earth's impact craters. “We don't really have a rock record of this time on Earth, which means [the find] gives us a window to a time we can't really study here.”

Digging deep

Collected by Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard on February 6, 1971, the rock bearing the suspected piece of Earth—formally named 14321—is one of the largest that the Apollo missions brought back from the moon.

The basketball-size stone weighs almost 20 pounds. It's a type of rock called a breccia, sort of a stony collage pieced together from bits of many different, older rocks. The impact that made Imbrium crater, one of the huge dark splotches on the moon's near side, likely forged this larger rock and flung it to the Apollo 14 landing site.

BBSKwOg.img?h=532&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

© Getty FILE - In this Feb. 13, 1971 file photo, Apollo 14 astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. conducts an experiment near a lunar crater, using an instrument from a two-wheeled cart carrying various tools. On Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017, a California-led research team reported that the moon formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system. Previous estimates ranged within 100 million years, all the way out to 200 million years of the solar system’s creation. (NASA via AP)

Most of its components, called clasts, are dark in color. But one piece stands out as oddly bright, with a makeup similar to the granites you might find on Earth. To find out where did this outlier bit of 14321 came from, Bellucci's team re-sampled the rock and focused on minerals within it called zircons.

“Zircon is an incredibly hardy, robust, sturdy mineral,” says study coauthor David Kring, a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. “So if you are looking for a relic of the most ancient geologic processes, zircon's a very good mineral to begin with.”

When the team analyzed these zircons and the surrounding quartz, they found that the oddball clast formed in conditions that would've been really weird on the moon at the time. For one, the zircons formed in far colder, oxygen-rich magmas than the moon typically has.

BBSK5jJ.img?h=627&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

© Photograph by NASA/modified by LPI

An arrow marks the light-colored portion, or felsite clast, of 14321 that researchers think formed on Earth.

In addition, the clast seems to have formed at pressures you'd only find on the moon more than a hundred miles below its surface. But the impact that geologists think formed 14321 probably dug no more than 45 miles into the lunar ground. If the clast formed so deep, how did it get up to the surface?

The researchers soon realized that the clast's head-scratching properties make perfect sense if it instead formed on Earth. About 12 miles beneath Earth's surface, magmas experience temperature, pressure, and oxygen levels just like the ones that formed the mystery clast.

When Bellucci made a chart that compared Earth's zircons against the lunar ones, the similarities became clear.

“It was dead in the middle of the terrestrial field, and then I was like, Whoa ... that's awesome!” Bellucci says. “From there, it snowballed.”

Seeking more samples

Future research on the samples could firm up Bellucci's interpretation. It's also possible that other moon rocks currently in humanity's collection contain flecks of ancient Earth.

“I'm sure we'll find additional samples, and I have a sneaky suspicion that this is going to prompt a lot of other people in the community to do likewise,” Kring says.

Fresh samples from the moon also would help—and may be coming soon. For instance, China's upcoming Chang'e-5 lunar mission is expected to return samples. But for now, work on the Apollo material is grounded.

Though U.S. lawmakers have reportedly reached a deal to fund the U.S. government temporarily, the ongoing shutdown has derailed many scientists' lives—including those of the study authors.

As of Thursday evening, Kring says, “my institute is going to be shutting down at the end of tomorrow. We’re not going to be able to do the exciting science that this discovery illustrates.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/this-may-be-earths-oldest-rock—and-it-was-collected-on-the-moon/ar-BBSKohZ?li=BBoPWjQ

 

 

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If that's true then the rock had quite a journey... first jettisoned to the Moon by a meteor impact some 4 billion years ago and then brought back to Earth by astronauts in early 70s... xD on a serious note, that could be a groundbreaking discovery. Imagine finding preserved early Earth fossils on Moon and learning about the very beginning of life from them :o 

I'm so glad we're going back to Moon.

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Something curious I came across today:

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Ten thousand light years from earth in a constellation far, far away, there is massive cloud of alcohol. It’s space booze.

Discovered in 1995 near the constellation Aquila, the cloud is 1000 times larger than the diameter of our solar system. It contains enough ethyl alcohol to fill 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. To down that much alcohol, every person on earth would have to drink 300,000 pints each day—for one billion years.

Sadly, for those of you planning an interstellar pub crawl, the cloud is 58 quadrillion miles away. It’s also a cocktail of 32 compounds, some of them as nasty as carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia.

The galaxy has a second intergalactic liquor cabinet in the Sagittarius B2 Cloud (the bright, orange-red spot in the image above), which holds 10 billion billion billion liters of cosmic hooch. Most of it’s undrinkable, though. The cloud holds mostly methanol, the same alcohol in antifreeze and windshield washer fluid. Similarly, near the center of the Milky Way, a cloudy bridge of methanol surrounds a stellar nursery. The bridge of booze is 288 billion miles wide.

It wasn’t spilled after some Martian keg party.  As new stars heat up—formed as clouds of gas and dust collapse—ethyl alcohol can attach to specks of floating dust. As the dust moves toward the budding star, the alcohol heats, separates, and turns to gas. For astronomers, these alcohol clouds can be a telling clue into how our biggest stars form.

Not to mention, alcohol is an organic compound: the building blocks of life. According to Barry Turner at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, these alcohol clouds may “help us better understand how life might arise elsewhere in the cosmos.”

Now, if you’re wondering what these space spirits may taste or smell like, Sagittarius B2 has an answer. The cloud contains ethyl formate, an ester that helps give raspberries their taste—and reportedly smells like rum. It seems, then, that the center of our galaxy may taste and smell like raspberry-flavored rum.

Scientists haven’t found if it pairs well with moon cheese.

https://mentalfloss.com/article/51271/there-are-giant-clouds-alcohol-floating-space

 

Space booze that tastes and smells like raspberry flavoured rum... What are we waiting for???

@Bluewolf @CaaC - John

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Researchers develop a steam-powered spacecraft that can hop between asteroids

By mining asteroids to obtain its fuel, the World Is Not Enough (WINE) spacecraft could theoretically explore our solar system forever.

 

Read more here: https://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/02/researchers-develop-a-steam-powered-spacecraft-that-can-hop-between-asteroids

 

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Alien life possible on nearby 'Super-Earth,' scientists announce

Doyle Rice  (13/01/2019)

BBPHYQV.img?h=799&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

© Provided by USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, Inc.

A “nearby” Super-Earth planet has the potential for life to develop, astronomers announced Thursday. 

Scientists said that if water exists on the planet, geothermal heating could create a subsurface ocean where primitive life might exist. The planet orbits Barnard’s Star, which is the second-nearest star system to the Earth.

The planet – known as Barnard b – is admittedly a bit on the nippy side at 274 degrees below zero. This means the planet would be ice-covered. But underneath the ice could be water “that provides niches for life," according to Villanova University astrophysicists Edward Guinan and Scott Engle. 

The researchers' findings were presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.

The planet was discovered only two months ago. 

Warmth from the planet's hot core could cause life to form in the planet's oceans, which would be underneath its ice-covered surface.

"We note that the surface temperature on Jupiter's icy moon Europa is similar to Barnard b, but because of tidal heating, Europa probably has liquid oceans under its icy surface," he said.

Super-Earths are planets with masses larger than the Earth but not as big as the ice giants in our solar system, such as Neptune and Uranus.

The planet and its star are nearby in cosmic terms only: At 30 trillion miles from Earth, Barnard's Star is the closest single star to our solar system. It's a barren, frigid world because light from Barnard's Star provides it with only 2 percent of the energy the Earth receives from the sun.

Guinan said telescopes will need to continue peering at the planet. "Such observations will shed light on the nature of the planet's atmosphere, surface and potential habitability," he added.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/alien-life-possible-on-nearby-super-earth-scientists-announce/ar-BBSaHrC?li=BBqdg4K

 

 

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Japan sets date for asteroid 'rock grab'

By Paul Rincon

Science editor, BBC News website

download.thumb.png.6b7456da9db50902cb16ee2a668c9215.png

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 will attempt to collect a sample of soil and rock from an asteroid on 22 February, the country's space agency (Jaxa) says.

Hayabusa 2 reached asteroid Ryugu in June 2018 after a three-and-a-half-year journey from Earth.

It will descend to the surface and attempt to grab a sample of rock and soil from a pre-chosen site.

The spacecraft will return to Earth with the samples in 2020 after its exploration of Ryugu is complete.

Jaxa officials had to delay the touchdown last October, after they found the asteroid's surface was more rugged than expected.

During sample collection, the spacecraft will approach the 1km-wide asteroid with an instrument called the sampler horn. On touchdown, a 5g projectile made of the metal tantalum is fired into the rocky surface at 300m/s.

The particles kicked up by the impact will be caught by a specially-designed section of the sampler horn.

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In September, Hayabusa 2 deployed two robotic "hoppers" that propelled themselves across the surface of Ryugu, sending back images and other data.

Then, in October, the "mothership" despatched a French-German instrument package called Mascot to the surface.

Later this year, perhaps in March or April, Jaxa plans to detonate an explosive charge that will punch a crater into the surface of Ryugu.

Hayabusa-2 would then descend into the crater to collect fresh samples of material that have not been altered by aeons of exposure to the environment of space.

Ryugu belongs to a particularly primitive type of asteroid, and is therefore a relic left over from the early days of our Solar System.

The sample collection operations should allow scientists in labs on Earth to study the material, shedding light on the origin and evolution of our own planet.

The 30 billion yen mission is the successor to another Jaxa asteroid explorer, Hayabusa, which means "peregrine falcon" in Japanese.

This earlier mission was launched in 2003 and reached the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47159214

 

 

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Our galaxy is due to crash into its neighbour—but when?

 Nadia Drake

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is destined to collide with its largest neighbor, a sparkling collection of stars called the Andromeda galaxy. This cataclysm has been foretold by well-known physics, and astronomers know that when the space dust clears, neither galaxy will look the same: Within a billion years or so of first contact, the two will merge and form a much larger, elliptical galaxy.

But new measurements of stars within Andromeda, made by the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, are changing predictions for when, and exactly how, that collision will go down.

BBTkeXr.img?h=799&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

© Photograph by ZTF/D. Goldstein and R. Hurt (Caltech)

The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31, shines in a newly released picture from the Zwicky Transient Facility in California.

As astronomers report in the Astrophysical Journal, the originally predicted crash date of 3.9 billion years from now has been pushed back by about 600 million years. And instead of a head-on collision, astronomers are predicting more of an initial glancing blow—kind of like knocking into a neighbor’s rear-view mirror.

“The overall picture is not too different,” says study author Roeland van der Marel of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “But the exact orbital pathways are different.”

Is that good news? It sounds like this collision is still inevitable.

It is inevitable. Andromeda, which is currently 2.5 million light-years away, is hurtling toward the Milky Way at nearly 250,000 miles an hour.

Astronomers have known this since Vesto Slipher first aimed a telescope at Andromeda and measured the galaxy’s motion in 1912. (He didn’t know it was a galaxy at the time, when conventional wisdom suggested it was a nebulous cloud inside the Milky Way. Needless to say, Slipher’s calculations suggested that idea needed revising).

Later, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope were able to measure the sideways motion of Andromeda, which determines whether the galaxies are destined for a direct hit or a cosmic brush-pass. Using those observations, in 2012 van der Marel and his team forecast a head-on collision in roughly 3.9 billion years—a prediction they’ve just revised.

“It is interesting, even though it is in some ways a fairly minor modification of what was known previously,” says Brant Robertson of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

What did Gaia do differently from Hubble?

Gaia took a good look at 1,084 of the brightest stars within Andromeda and measured their motions. Then, van der Marel and his team averaged those observations and calculated Andromeda’s rotation rate for the first time, as well as making new calculations of the galaxy’s side-to-side movement.

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© Getty Milky way over Corno Gries near Nufenenpass Ticino Switzerland Europe. (Photo by: ClickAlps/REDA&CO/UIG via Getty Images)

That latter observation is “fiendishly difficult to make at these distances,” says Julianne Dalcanton of the University of Washington.

With those new numbers, the team re-derived Andromeda’s trajectory using computer models. And when they put the galaxy on fast-forward, it took a slightly different, more tangential path toward the Milky Way, delaying the eventual collision and delivering more of a side-swipe than a face punch.

Now, predictions suggest that initial boop will occur 4.5 billion years from now, which Dalcanton says is not surprising.

“Since we’re talking billions of years here,” she says, “even slight changes in the current motions can play out very differently when ‘fast forwarded’ over eons.”

So, how will this galactic smackdown play out?

At their first close approach, the two galaxies will be about 420,000 light-years apart, or far enough from one another that their glittering disks will not interact. However, galaxies are embedded in a large amount of dark matter, and as the Milky Way and Andromeda pass one another, those dark haloes will snag.

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© Getty Above view of the Milky Way, From above, the Milky Way appears as a spiral that rotates on itself around a nucleus. (Photo by: QAI Publishing/UIG via Getty Images)

“That causes friction, which causes them to slow down and lose energy—and fall back together,” van der Marel says.

In other words, the galaxies will U-turn and actually collide, pass through one another, whip around, and collide again. This will happen over and over until eventually those collisions have sculpted them into a single galaxy.

What does this mean for Earth?

As was true for the original prediction, this merger won’t mean much of anything at all to any earthly lifeforms that still exist in 4.5 billion years. Space is big and stars are far apart, and even when galaxies collide, individual stars rarely crash into one another.

“We would still find ourselves orbiting the sun on a more randomly oriented orbit within a large elliptical galaxy,” van der Marel says.

Still, the cosmic light show that will unfold overhead promises to be pretty spectacular. As the two galaxies approach one another, Andromeda will grow bigger and bigger in the night sky, eventually distorting into a deformed spiral as the Milky Way’s gravity tugs on it. Then, as the galaxies begin boomeranging and smashing together, compressed gases will ignite bursts of new star formation.

“That’s when it really looks pretty on the sky,” van der Marel says.

The question is whether anything on Earth’s surface will still be alive to notice. By that point, the sun will be well on its way to becoming a red giant star, which is a natural stage in stellar evolution. As that happens, it will brighten and balloon outward, engulfing Mercury and Venus and turning Earth into a roasted bit of planetary charcoal

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/our-galaxy-is-due-to-crash-into-its-neighbour—but-when/ar-BBTmFQI?ocid=chromentp

 

 

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'This time we'll stay': NASA to send humans to the moon

Ajay Nair, news reporter

NASA is planning to take the "next giant leap in deep space exploration" as it looks to send astronauts to the moon who are able to stay there.

The space agency's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, called for American firms to help develop human lunar landers - "reusable systems for astronauts to land on the moon" - as he said scientists had been given a mandate by President Donald Trump and Congress to return to the moon for the first time since 1972.

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© Other NASA has called on American firms to help develop human lunar landers

He said NASA was planning to send astronauts "to the moon and eventually to Mars and beyond" and that it was "an exciting time to be leading America's space programme".

"As a lifelong NASA supporter, I am thrilled to be talking once again about landing humans on the moon," he said, writing in online magazine OZY. "But to some, saying we're returning to the moon implies we'll be doing the same as we did 50 years ago.

"I want to be clear - that is not our vision. We are going to the moon with innovative new technologies and systems to explore more locations across the surface than we ever thought possible. This time, when we go to the moon, we will stay."

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© Getty Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon

Mr Bridenstine said plans would get under way next week when industry partners visit NASA's headquarters to talk about lunar landers, which could help maintain "a sustainable, human presence beyond Earth's orbit".

He said: "That starts with the Gateway - a lunar orbiting outpost designed to ensure the safe transit of astronauts to the lunar surface and back home again.

"The Gateway will be the home base for the first reusable human lunar lander system."

The space agency has already set up agreements with nine firms to send cargo to the moon and hopes to design landers that can take astronauts back to the surface of Earth's satellite.

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© Getty NASA is hoping for astronauts to spend more time on the moon next time around

NASA hopes to land astronauts on the moon once again "within the next decade".

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the moon in 1969. A total of 12 people have made the lunar landing, with the last two - Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt - making the journey in 1972.

Mr Bridenstine said: "More than two-thirds of Americans today were not even alive to witness the six successful Apollo moon landings, myself included.

"Extraordinary as they were, for many the lunar expeditions are facts from history books or stories told by older relatives.

"But unlike Apollo, this time we're going to the moon to stay, and from there we'll take the next giant leap in deep space exploration."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/this-time-well-stay-nasa-to-send-humans-to-the-moon/ar-BBTmnAk?ocid=chromentp

 

 

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