To Keep GPS Constellations From Drifting, Look To The Moon

Global Positioning Systems are a key feature in everyday life for much of the world’s population. Whether it’s ensuring a ship delivers its goods safely, or you’re able to avoid a road closure on your commute home, GPS can help. But the system has a weakness - it relies on ground stations that could suffer from blackouts, natural disasters, or cyber attacks. And if those ground stations go offline for long enough, the whole system itself can begin to “drift”. Aerospace engineers have been attempting to counteract this problem for years, but so far with little success. But a new paper from a research team led by Xia Lin and Baojun Lin at the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites, and published in Satellite Navigation, explains a potential answer to this problem - link the GPS satellites up with some in orbit around the Moon.

A Buried Volcano on the Moon Hints At An Ancient Lunar Dynamo

Scientists know for certain the moon doesn’t currently have a magnetosphere. But they’ve been debating for decades about whether it ever did. Data from both Apollo samples and orbital scientific instruments have proven divisive, and so the debate still rages. But a new paper from researchers at ETH Zurich, DLR, and the Institute of Applied Geosciences hopes to resolve the debate once and for all - by definitively proving that the Moon did, indeed, once have a magnetic dynamo.

New Simulations Connect the First Galaxies to the Universe We See Today

In a recent study, researchers at the international MEGATRON project used some of the most detailed simulations of the early Universe to investigate how the first stars and galaxies formed.

Neutrons, Rotating Black Holes, and a Galactic PeVatron at the Center of the Milky Way

Supermassive black holes generate tremendous amounts of energy through their accretion disks and jets. But they can also generate energy through the magnetic Penrose process. A new study looks at how we might observe this process through multimessenger astronomy.

Space Radiation Sparks A Biological Cascade Of Cancer

Deep space travel comes with a huge potential downside - radiation exposure that can kill an astronaut either quickly or slowly over time if not managed correctly. But what exactly does that mean, and is there any way to handle it other than sticking more and more protective layers between the squishy biological systems inside a spacecraft and the radiative void of deep space? A new paper from researchers at Oklahoma State University and the University of Texas Health Science Center hopes to answer both questions, and while the causes of radiation they point out are complex, they also offer some potential solutions as well.

X-Rays and AI Reveal How Spacecraft Heat Shields Burn in Real Time

Heat shields are undeniably one of the most important parts of any spacecraft that intends to enter an atmosphere. And the material they are made out of is absolutely critical. Improving them has been a bit of a challenge though, as typically researchers only get “before” and “after” pictures of when the heat shield completes its job of helping a spacecraft land safely back on Earth. That changed recently, though, with a collaboration between NASA and the Advanced Light Source (ALS) located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which allowed researchers to watch a heat shield fall apart in real time.

XRISM Makes First-Ever Detection of a Pulsar Feeding from a Companion's Stellar "Wind"

Using data from the Japan-led XRISM observatory, astronomers have directly observed a giant star’s stellar wind captured by its compact companion (triggering X-ray flares) for the first time.