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space

Mars: Curiosity Rover Snaps a Selfie

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Curiosity Rovver selfie - NASA

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity recently posed for a selfie in front of a beautiful Martian rock outcrop called “Mont Mercou,” after probing the area for clues about the Red Planet’s past. Curiosity landed inside Mars’ 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012 with a primary goal to find out if the planet is, or was, suitable for life. Earlier in March, the rover arrived at a scenic rock formation as it traversed the slopes of Mount Sharp — a 3-mile-tall (5 km) mountain located at the center of Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been climbing since September 2014. This … Read more

How Long Would It Take to Walk Around the Moon?

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Moon Landing - Deposit Photos

From our vantage point on Earth, the moon looks small. But if you were to hop in a spaceship, don a spacesuit and go on an epic lunar hike, how long would it take to walk all the way around it? The answer depends on myriad factors, including how fast you can go, how much time every day you spend walking, and what detours you’ll need to take to avoid dangerous topography. Such a trip around the moon could take longer than a year, but in reality, there are a lot more challenges to overcome. A total of 12 humans … Read more

Lava tubes in Hawaii could be a dress rehearsal for Lunar/Martian colonies

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Thurston Lava Tube - Deposit Photos

When humans build the first bases and habitats on other worlds, they’ll confront dangers and challenges unlike any faced by the astronauts who went before them. To prepare for such challenges, scientists are descending deep underground into lava tubes in Hawaii that simulate conditions on rocky alien worlds. There, mission crew members navigate uneven volcanic terrain and endure the physical constraints of performing research in a hostile environment. Wearing bulky suits like those required for extraterrestrial exploration, the scientists study the geology and organisms found in lava tunnels and caverns at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano. This unique research station at … Read more

ANNOUNCEMENT: Penumbra – Dan Ackerman

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Penumbra - Dan Ackerman

QSFer Dan Ackerman has a new queer sci fi book out (bi, trans, pan): Penumbra. Arden inherited Eden, a space station floating over a dying planet. He also inherited an oppressive class system, worker shortages, and an entitled ruling class that refuses to make concessions. Rhys, a worker who’s earned Arden’s trust, helps him make unpopular changes to keep Eden alive. Arden’s reputation as a shallow and formula-addled leader leaves his friends and foes skeptical of his leadership. Rhys gains power and is met with resistance from the ruling class. But without intervention, Eden’s labor shortages may lead to the … Read more

SPACE: Black Hole’s Magnetic Fields Revealed

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Black Hole magnetic fields - NASA / EHT Collaboration

First-of-their-kind images of the magnetic field around a black hole may explain how the black hole shoots out a jet of energy and matter more than 5,000 light-years into space. The new images come from the first black hole ever photographed, which sits at the center of Messier 87, a giant elliptical galaxy 55 million light-years away. In 2017, an international collaboration of more than 300 researchers coordinated 11 radio telescopes around the globe to observe the center of M87. The resulting joint telescope was dubbed the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The result, released in 2019, was an image of … Read more

SPACE: Our Neighborhood of the Milky Way is One of the Safer Places to Live

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Milky Way - Pixabay

Astronomers have searched the entire Milky Way to identify the safest places to live. It turns out, we’re in a pretty good spot. But if the past year has made you feel ready to relocate to another planet, you might want to look toward the center of the galaxy, according to the new research. The new findings were made by a group of Italian astronomers, who studied locations where powerful cosmic explosions may have killed off life. These explosions, such as supernovas and gamma-ray bursts, spew high-energy particles and radiation that can shred DNA and kill life. By this logic, … Read more

Is There a Protoplanet Inside the Earth?

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planet collision - pixabay

A protoplanet slammed into the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, knocking loose a chunk of rock that would later become the moon. Now, scientists say that remnants of that protoplanet can still be found, lodged deep inside Earth, Science Magazine reported. If remains of the protoplanet, known as Theia, did stick around after the impact, that may explain why two continent-size blobs of hot rock now lie in the Earth’s mantle, one beneath Africa and the other under the Pacific Ocean. These massive blobs would stand about 100 times taller than Mount Everest, were they ever hauled up to … Read more

SPACE: We Should Study (And Maybe Seed) Dead Worlds

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Europa - Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The search for life in the universe tends to focus on habitable environments. But to answer questions about how life emerged and spread, as well as the limits of habitability, researchers may want to consider looking at dead worlds — and perhaps even (very carefully) seeding them with life. “The biological study of lifelessness seems counterintuitive, because biology is the study of life,” said astrobiologist Charles Cockell of the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. But in a paper set to be published in April in the journal Astrobiology, Cockell makes the case that focusing entirely on living worlds leaves … Read more

sPACE: White Dwarfs Wear Crushed Corpses of Planets in Their Atmospheres

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white dwarf

Astronomers are looking for the bones of dead planets inside the corpses of dead stars — and they may have just found some. In a paper published Feb. 11 in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of researchers described how they used data from the Gaia space satellite to peer into the atmospheres of four white dwarfs — the shriveled, crystalline husks of once-massive stars that burned through all their fuel. Swirling among the hot soup of hydrogen and helium surrounding those stars, the team detected clear traces of lithium, sodium and potassium — metals that are abundant in planetary … Read more

SPACE: MOXIE Will Soon Make Oxygen – On Mars

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MOXIE - Nasa

Having safely landed on Mars on Feb. 18, NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, is just beginning its scientific exploration of the Red Planet. But sometime in the next few weeks, the car-size robot will also help pave the way for future humans to travel to our neighboring world with a small instrument known as the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE). MOXIE, which will soon be pulling precious oxygen out of Mars’ poisonous atmosphere, is gold-colored and about the size of a bread box. It sits tucked away inside Perseverance’s chassis, where it will conduct the first demonstration on another … Read more