Psyche Mission Passes Independent Review Board with Flying Colors

An independently appointed review board recently announced that NASA, their Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have exceeded expectations in taking steps to ensure the successful launch of the metal-rich asteroid-hunting Psyche mission this October. This comes after Psyche’s initial launch date was delayed from August 2022 due to late delivery of the spacecraft’s flight software and testing equipment, which prevented engineers from performing the necessary checkouts prior to launch.

“I am pleased with the independent review board’s resoundingly positive assessment of JPL’s hard work in correcting the issues outlined in the board’s original report,” Dr. Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in the statement. “We know the work is not over. As we move forward, we will work with JPL to ensure these implemented changes continue to be prioritized to position Psyche and the other missions in JPL’s portfolio for success.”

This most recent development comes after the independent review board delivered a report in November 2022 outlining extensive steps that needed to be taken to ensure a successful mission going forward. As part of their May 30 report, the review board conducted extensive follow-up evaluations with JPL, the Psyche mission, and Caltech, and have stated all parties have exceeded expectations and are on track for an October 2023 launch window.

The May 30 report delivered wide praise to JPL senior leadership, JPL Line organization, the Psyche Project, and the Psyche Principal Investigator, calling the October 2023 Launch Readiness Date (LRD) as “credible and the overall probability of mission success is high.”

“We convened this board weeks after I stepped in as director and addressing the issues it raised has been a central focus in my first year as director of JPL. The results are gratifying,” said JPL Director Dr. Laurie Leshin. “Our goals went beyond getting Psyche to the launch pad to improving JPL across the board as we work on missions that will help us better understand Earth, explore the solar system and the universe, and search for signs of life. Our strong response to the board’s findings reinforces the notion that JPL can solve any problem with the right focus and attention.”

Approved in January 2017, NASA’s Psyche mission will be sending a spacecraft to asteroid 16 Psyche, which is a metallic asteroid that resides in the asteroid belt and is hypothesized to be the remnants of the iron core of a planetary embryo. Since studying planetary cores is incredibly difficult, this mission offers an opportunity to gain insight into the formation and evolution of planetary objects within our solar system.

A June 2020 artist illustration of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University)

With the new launch date of October 5, 2023, the Psyche spacecraft is scheduled to perform a gravity-assist maneuver at Mars sometime in 2026, with a scheduled arrival at 16 Psyche sometime in August 2029. Upon arrival, the spacecraft is scheduled to orbit 16 Psyche for approximately 21 months while performing gradual orbit degradation maneuvers, meaning the spacecraft will decrease its altitude to the asteroid while conducting necessary science objectives.

What new insights will Psyche give us about metallic asteroids and planetary embryos during its mission, and what can this teach us about the formation and evolution of planetary objects in our solar system and beyond? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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Melting Water in Mars Past Could Have Created Martian Gullies

A recent study published in Science examines how thin channels inside impact craters on Mars could have formed from Martian gullies, which share similar characteristics with gullies on Earth and are typically formed from cascading meltwater, despite the Martian atmosphere being incapable of supporting liquid water on its surface. However, the researchers hypothesize these gullies could have formed during periods of high obliquity, also known as axial tilt, on Mars, which could have resulted in a brief rise in surface temperatures that could have melted some surface and subsurface ice, leading to meltwater cascading down the sides of impact craters across the planet.

A planet’s axial tilt plays a primary role in determining the climate. For Earth, its axial tilt undergoes a stable precession between 22.1 degrees and 24.5 degrees every 41,000 years due to the gravitational stability from our Moon. As a result, our climate and seasons are relatively stable. However, the planet Mars experiences much more severe axial tilt variances over the course of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, resulting in equally severe changes in climate and seasons, since it doesn’t have a large enough orbiting body to stabilize it. This is because despite Mars having two moons, Phobos and Deimos, they are both much smaller than Earth’s Moon and provide a negligible gravitational tug on the Red Planet.

Currently, the axial tilt of Mars is approximately 25 degrees, but the researchers hypothesize through model simulations and orbiter images that when the axial tilt was at 35 degrees, this resulted in both a rise in atmospheric pressure and summertime surface temperatures across the planet to briefly to allow liquid water to exist. This liquid water could have then cascaded down the sides of impact craters, producing the thin channels we see today, and they say these conditions could have existed as recently as approximately 630,000 years ago.

Mars’ obliquity (axial tilt) varies cyclically over the course of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, which affects the planet’s climate and seasons, to include atmospheric pressure and summertime surface temperature. (Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

“We know from a lot of our research and other people’s research that early on in Mars history, there was running water on the surface with valley networks and lakes,” said Dr. Jim Head, who is a professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-author on the study. “But about 3 billion years ago, all of that liquid water was lost, and Mars became what we call a hyper-arid or polar desert. We show here that even after that and in the recent past, when Mars’ axis tilts to 35 degrees, it heats up sufficiently to melt snow and ice, bringing liquid water back until temperatures drop and it freezes again.”

The formation of impact crater gullies has been debated in the scientific community for several years, with previous studies suggesting they were formed from carbon dioxide frost sublimation (evaporation) from the Martian regolith, which free up rocks and rubble that slide down impact crater slopes, producing the thin channels. This most recent study not only challenges those previous hypotheses but attempts to paint an entirely new picture for how these impact crater channels form in the first place.

“Our study shows that the global distribution of gullies is better explained by liquid water over the last million years,” said Dr. Jay Dickson, a former researcher at Brown who is now at the California Institute of Technology, and lead author of the study. “Water explains the elevation distribution of gullies in ways that CO2 cannot. This means that Mars has been able to create liquid water in enough volume to erode channels within the last million years, which is very recent on the scale of Mars geologic history.”

Image of gullies in Terra Sirenum on Mars taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

As seen on Earth, liquid water leads to life. Therefore, this study raises new hypotheses as to whether life could exist on Mars, either in the present or the past, and the researchers note that axial tilt of Mars will eventually go back to 35 degrees. Additionally, the study also raises awareness for future targets of exploration on the Red Planet, either with robots or humans. There are currently 4,861 separate gully formations identified across Mars, which include craters, valleys, and mounds, totaling tens of thousands of individual gullies that could be explored on future missions.

What new discoveries will researchers make about gullies on Mars, and could liquid water exist on the surface during periods of high axial tilt? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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IceCube Makes a Neutrino Map of the Milky Way

We’ve seen the Milky Way with ultraviolet eyes, through x-ray vision, gamma-ray views, radio emissions, microwaves, and visible light. Now, consider a neutrino point of view. Thanks to the IceCube Collaboration, we get to see our home galaxy through the lens of this mysterious particle. It’s an eerie sight that also tells us our galaxy isn’t quite like the others. It’s a neutrino desert.

Neutrinos are tiny, massless particles. They speed across the universe and seem to come at Earth from all directions. When atomic nuclei come together or break apart, they produce these particles. This can happen in galactic and cosmic sources (such as supernova explosions) to produce high-energy neutrinos. There are also atmospheric neutrinos, produced when a cosmic ray smashes through the air. A team of 350 scientists collaborated to map high-energy neutrino emissions from the Milky Way. It turns out that the Milky Way produces far fewer of them than many distant galaxies.

“What’s intriguing is that, unlike the case for light of any wavelength, in neutrinos, the universe outshines the nearby sources in our own galaxy,” says Francis Halzen, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and principal investigator at IceCube. He and the team want to know why.

Mapping the Wild Neutrino

IceCube Collaboration focused on the central part of the Milky Way’s galactic plane. The facility is in Antarctica, almost directly under that part of the sky. The team faced some unusual challenges, however. There’s a constant “background buzz” of energetic particles produced by cosmic-ray interactions with Earth’s atmosphere. That made it difficult to sift out the sparse numbers of high-energy neutrinos from galactic sources. These have energies millions to billions of times higher than those produced in stars, for example.

This image shows a visual representation of one of the highest-energy neutrino detections superimposed on a view of the IceCube Lab at the South Pole. Credit: IceCube Collaboration

To get at their high-energy prey, the IceCube team looked for so-called “cascade” events in a dataset of 60,000 detections from ten years’ worth of IceCube data. The additional detailed analysis helped them select what they called “higher purity” events. These represent astrophysical neutrinos from beyond Earth, such as those from the energetic core of the M77 galaxy. Another part of the collaboration devised a machine-learning method to help characterize the cascades created by neutrinos. They compared those from the Milky Way to prediction maps of locations where the Milky Way should be bright in neutrinos. That told the team the Galaxy doesn’t match up to other galaxies in terms of neutrino output.

Neutrinos Provide a Clue or Two

This puzzling find in our own galaxy raises other questions about why it’s so lacking in these particles. According to collaborator Ke Fang, it’s 10 to 100 times dimmer in neutrinos than the others. That raises the question of why that’s true and where the high-energy sources exist.

“One implication is that our galaxy has not hosted the type of sources that produced the bulk of high-energy neutrinos for the past few million years,” said Fang, “which is roughly the time since the last jet activity of the black hole of our own galaxy. Planned and future follow-up analyses by IceCube will further our understanding of the particle accelerators of our own galaxy.”

The core of the Milky Way, with the supermassive black hole (Sag A*), is obscured from us by vast clouds of gas and dust. Ongoing studies reveal activity in the core, particularly when Sgr A ingests material. Stars in the region follow looping trajectories influenced by the black hole’s immense gravity. But, the black hole is not, at the moment, as active as those in active galactic nuclei. In those places, neutrinos are produced in abundance. Further IceCube observations of the central plane of the Milky Way should help explain its neutrino-poor “problem.”

About IceCube

The IceCube observatory is the first-ever neutrino detector built at the South Pole. The actual detector is embedded in a kilometer-sized block of ice, which helps it in the search for neutrinos. These fast-moving particles originate in energetic events in the cosmos, such as exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, and encounters between black holes and neutron stars. Not only does this observatory search out neutrinos and other particles, but it’s supposed to help scientists answer some fundamental mysteries in science. These include delving into what makes a neutrino tick. In addition, data from the observatory may help answer questions about dark matter.

For More Information

IceCube shows Milky Way Galaxy is a Neutrino Desert
Observation of high-energy neutrinos from the Galactic plane
IceCube Observatory

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Here Come JWSTs First Images of Saturn

It’s Saturn’s turn.

The JWST is aiming its powerful, gold-coated, segmented beryllium mirror at our Solar System’s second-largest, and perhaps most striking, planet. So far, we’ve only got a sneak preview of the raw images without any processing or scientific commentary.

But they’re a start.

We’re accustomed to gorgeous images of Saturn from the Hubble Space Telescope, especially as part of its OPAL (Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy) observing program. Those images are not only scientifically rich, they’re also eye candy for the rest of us. But that’s not what these new Saturn images from the JWST are about.

This Hubble Space Telescope image captures exquisite details of Saturn and its ring system. It’s from 2019 and is part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team

These images are from a proposal that’s testing the JWST’s NIRCAM instrument and its ability to detect faint moons around bright planets like Saturn. Saturn has a confirmed 146 moons, not counting the thousands of moonlets embedded in its rings. But there may be other identifiable moons hidden beyond the reach of our previous technology. The JWST could find them.

Not only that but finding faint moons around Saturn will help find faint moons around other planets, even in other solar systems. “Deep spectra of selected small moons of Saturn (Epimetheus, Pandora, Pallene, and Telesto) with NIRSpec IFU will test the capacity of JWST to take deep spectra of faint targets near bright planets, which will be useful for ERS (Early Release Science) and GO (General Observers) of other planetary systems,” the proposal description explains.

Ouch! My eyes! This one is in need of some processing, but it’s obviously Saturn. What else looks like this? Image Credit: Image Credit: NASA/CSA/ESA/STScI

These images are a peek behind the curtain of polished press releases and processed images—and scientific commentary. But they’re fascinating in their own way. For one thing, it shows how much work goes into turning raw images and data into something relatable.

Remember the ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ JWST image from last summer? It was a combination of images captured with the telescope’s MIRI and NIRCAM instruments with different filters.

The JWST captured this stunning image of a portion of the Carina Nebula dubbed the ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ in July, 2022. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

But the raw images looked much different. Here’s one of them.

The JWST captured this raw image of NGC 3324, the Carina Nebula, with its MIRI instrument and the F1130W filter. It only starts to take shape when it’s processed and combined with other images. Image Credit. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Here’s another one, and this one looks more like what we’re accustomed to seeing in press releases and on websites.

Another raw JWST image of the ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ feature in NGC 3324. This one was captured with NIRCAM and its F444W filter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

If the JWST’s images of Jupiter from a year ago are any indication, then once these raw images are processed, we’re in for a spellbinding display. JWST showed us Jupiter as we’ve never seen it before, and the images were stunning, something we’re beginning to expect from the telescope.

This JWST image of Jupiter practically jumps off the screen. We can’t wait to see its images of Saturn once they get the same treatment. Image Credit: NASA/CSA/ESA/STScI

There is a cadre of excellent astronomical image processors, including Judy Schmidt (aka Geckzilla), Kevin Gill, and others, who will no doubt bring these images of Saturn to life with their artistry. Who knows? Maybe they’ve already got their hands on them and are busy preparing them for us.

Stay tuned.

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Virgin Galactic Flies Italians to Edge of Space for Its First Commercial Trip

After almost two decades of ups and downs, Virgin Galactic sent its first customers to the edge of space aboard its VSS Unity rocket plane.

Today’s 72-minute-long Galactic 01 flight, which took three Italians on a suborbital research mission, marked the start of the company’s commercial operations at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Two of the fliers, Col. Walter Villadei and Lt. Col. Angelo Landolfi, are officers in the Italian Air Force. The third Italian, Pantaleone Carlucci, is an engineer at the National Research Council of Italy. The crew brought along 13 research payloads, focusing on biomedicine, thermo-fluid dynamics and materials science.

Two Virgin Galactic pilots — Mike Masucci and Nicola Pecile — were at VSS Unity’s controls, and astronaut instructor Colin Bennett took a seat alongside the Italians. Two other pilots, Kelly Latimer and Jameel Janjua, flew the twin-fuselage VMS Eve airplane that carried Unity into the sky from Spaceport America and released it from a height of 44,500 feet to light up its hybrid rocket motor.

Unity’s flight reached an altitude of 52.9 miles (85 kilometers) at the top of the ride. That’s not quite all the way to the 100-kilometer height that currently serves as the internationally accepted boundary of outer space, but it’s well beyond the 50-mile height that NASA, the U.S. military and the Federal Aviation Administration use as their space standard.

In addition to tending their experiments and literally indulging in some flag-waving, the spacefliers were able to float around for a few minutes in zero gravity and gaze out the window at a curving Earth beneath the black sky of space.

The rocket plane glided back down to Spaceport America for a runway landing.

The list price for a flight on VSS Unity is $450,000 — but the Italians flew under a deal that was struck in 2019, when the price was lower, and the Italian government probably got a break.

“This groundbreaking collaboration propels Italy into the new era of commercial spaceflight as a pathfinder, fostering innovation and paving the way for further technological enhancement in this strategic domain,” Villadei said.

Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by British billionaire Richard Branson, who had hoped to start offering suborbital space trips just a few years later. The development effort took much longer than expected, however, and suffered setbacks including a fatal accident on the ground in 2007 and the loss of the VSS Enterprise and one of its pilots in 2014.

The company successfully sent a pair of test pilots beyond the 50-mile line for the first time in 2018. That milestone mission was followed by several test flights crewed exclusively by Virgin Galactic personnel, including Branson — setting the stage for today’s inaugural commercial mission.

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said the Galactic 01 flight would usher in “a new era of repeatable and reliable access to space for private passengers and researchers.” Galactic 02, which is billed as Virgin Galactic’s first spaceflight with private-sector astronauts, is scheduled for August.

“We expect VSS Unity to continue with monthly space missions while we simultaneously work to scale our future spaceship fleet for a global audience,” Colglazier said.

Virgin Galactic isn’t alone in the commercial spaceflight market: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture began flying paying passengers on its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship in mid-2021, and SpaceX is working with Shift4 CEO Jared Isaacman on several privately backed orbital missions.

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Nancy Grace Roman and Vera Rubin Will be the Perfect Astronomical Partnership

Two of the most important telescopes being constructed at the moment are Vera C. Rubin and Nancy Grace Roman. Each has the capability of transforming our understanding of the universe, but as a recent paper on the arxiv shows, they will be even more transformative when they work together.

Originally known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), Rubin Observatory will be a ground-based sky survey telescope. It will map the entire heavens visible from its location every few nights, giving us an unprecedented view of transient objects such as supernovae, variable stars, and stellar flares. Most survey telescopes sacrifice resolution for speed, but Rubin will use a new optical mirror design that will capture high-resolution images with nearly 50 times the apparent area of the Moon.

The Roman telescope on the other hand will be a space-based observatory. Originally named the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), Roman will study dark energy and discover new exoplanets through a process known as microlensing. Like Rubin, the Roman telescope will have a wide view of the sky, covering roughly the area of the Moon in a single image. In comparison, a single Hubble Space telescope is only about a fiftieth of a Moon-width. Roman will also observe the sky at even higher resolutions than Rubin, in both visible and infrared.

This new paper outlines how Rubin and Roman could be used together for specific research. For example, variable stars known as Cepheids vary in brightness in proportion to their overall luminosity. They are used as part of the cosmic distance ladder. As Rubin sky surveys find Cepheids, Roman can be used to determine their distance and motion, thus making Cepheid distance measurements more accurate. As Roman discovers exoplanets, Rubin can add spectroscopic observations to better understand things such as the metallicity of exoplanet stars. And there will be unexpected transient events where having two powerful telescopes will be extremely useful in characterizing events.

Vera Rubin (left) and Nancy Roman (right) together in 2009. Credit: NASA, Jay Freidlander

The astronomers for which these telescopes are named never directly collaborated in their research. Vera Rubin focused on the rotational motion of galaxies. She identified the galactic rotation problem, where outer stars have velocities similar to those of central stars, which was the foundational evidence for dark matter. Nancy Roman studied the spectra and motion of stars and discovered that stars of similar mass and type could have vastly different ages, which laid the groundwork for our understanding of stellar and galactic evolution. She also worked for NASA and was deeply involved in the development of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Both the Rubin and Roman telescopes have a heavy mantle to carry in their names. They will continue the work these women started, taking our understanding beyond the shores of knowledge two astronomers gave us. And by collaborating in spirit and in name, Vera C. Rubin and Nancy Grace Roman will inspire astronomers all across the world to make amazing discoveries of their own.

Reference: Street, R.A., et al. “Maximizing science return by coordinating the survey strategies of Roman with Rubin, and other major facilities.” arxiv preprint arXiv:2306.13792 (2023).

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860 Million-Year-Old Quasar Had Already Amassed 1.4 Billion Times the Mass of the Sun

It wasn’t long after the Big Bang that early galaxies began changing the Universe. Less than a billion years later, they had already put on a lot of weight. In particular, their central supermassive black holes were behemoths. New images from JWST show two massive galaxies as they appeared less than a billion years after the universe began.

One of the galaxies weighs in at a whopping 130 billion times the mass of the Sun. It’s black hole-driven quasar has 1.4 billion solar masses. (A quasar is the bright active nucleus of a galaxy thought to be powered by a supermassive black hole.) It turns out that these galaxies and their central black holes have completely different sizes in relation to each other. In addition, those spectacular masses raise some challenging questions. How did they get so massive so fast in the infant Universe? And, which came first? The galaxy or the black holes?

Those make up a puzzle facing an international team of researchers led by Xuheng Ding and John Silverman (both of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe). They announced their initial findings in the June 28, 2023 edition of the journal Nature.

JWST NIRCam 3.6 ?m image of HSC J2236+0032.  The zoom-out image, the quasar image, and the host galaxy image after subtracting the quasar light (from left to right). The image scale in light years is indicated in each panel. Credit: Ding, Onoue, Silverman et al.

Exploring the Quasar Hearts

The quasars they observed are called J2236+0032 and J2255+0251. Their host galaxies were first observed by the Subaru Telescope in Hawai’i. Both galaxies are relatively dim and are good targets for studies of the early universe. They lie at redshifts of 6.4 and 6.34. Those place them at a time when the universe was only 860 million years old. The research team at Kavli then used JWST to take a deeper look at these objects.

JWST looked at them at infrared wavelengths of 3.56 and 1.50 microns. In addition, JWST’s NIRSPEC spectrometer refined the galaxy’s stellar populations. Analysis of the data further refined the mass of the two galaxies. It also revealed the speed of gases moving at their hearts. That allowed the team to determine the masses of the two central supermassive black holes that power these quasars.

Answering Questions about these Quasars

One thing jumped out from the data right away: the ratio of the masses of the galaxies and their black holes. It turns out that the size of a supermassive black hole apparently tracks with the size of its host galaxy. Astronomers are exploring this relation in galaxies in the nearby universe, and find that the larger a galaxy is, the larger its central black hole should be. The two galaxies in the JWST discovery show the same relationship between their masses and the masses of their black holes.

The implication here is that the relationship actually was in place very early in cosmic history. This raises other questions about the mechanisms that connect the galaxies and their black hole cores to create this ratio. Astronomers suggest several scenarios. First, since these are active galactic nuclei (quasars), they can trigger further star formation in the galaxy via their jets and winds. But, those same activities can quench the births of new stars. This is an interesting feedback mechanism that causes the rate of star formation to track the rate of black hole accretion. Essentially, the AGN puts checks and balances on the galaxy’s growth.

Another idea is that the ratio of the masses of the galaxies and black holes is driven by black hole growth and star formation using the same fuel sources. This scenario could happen pretty easily after two fuel-rich galaxies merge. Mergers often spur star formation, so this could have happened with these early galaxies at a time when mergers were a dominant activity. A third scenario suggests that there may only be a statistical relationship and that more studies need to be made.

Need More Data

The data from galaxies HSC J2236+0032 and HSC J2255+0251 have posed the questions. Now it’s time for astronomers to observe more of these objects in the early universe to see if they can answer them. The team will continue their observations using JWST during the current Cycle 1. They already have telescope time to study J2236+0032 in more detail to answer some of the outstanding questions raised by this current work. In particular, these studies might be able to tell us if galaxies came first or black holes did. They’ll also reveal more details about the growth rates of both galaxies and their black hole-driven quasars in these early epochs of the Universe’s history.

For More Information

Starlight and the first black holes: researchers detect the host galaxies of quasars in the early universe
Feedback from AGN-driven Winds
The Link Between Black Holes and Their Galaxies

Detection of stellar light from quasar host galaxies at
redshifts above 6

ArXiv pre-release

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Good News! Astronauts are Drinking Almost all of Their Own Urine

In the near future, NASA and other space agencies plan to send crews beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to perform long-duration missions on the Moon and Mars. To meet this challenge, NASA is developing life support systems that will sustain crew members without the need for resupply missions from Earth. These systems must be regenerative and closed-loop in nature, meaning they will recycle consumables like food, air, and water without zero waste. Currently, crews aboard the International Space Station (ISS) rely on an Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) to meet their needs.

This system recycles air aboard the station by passing it through filters that scrub excess carbon dioxide produced by the crew’s exhalations. Meanwhile, the system uses advanced dehumidifiers to capture moisture from the crew’s exhalation and perspiration and sends this to the Water Purification Assembly (WPA). Another subsystem, called Urine Processor Assembly (UPA), recovers and distills water from astronaut urine. To boost the WPA’s efficiency, the crew integrated a new component called the Brine Processor Assembly (BPA), which recently passed an important milestone.

One of the main issues with long-duration missions to Mars and other locations in deep space is how distance makes resupply missions impractical. Unlike the ISS or missions in LEO, which can be resupplied in a matter of hours, transits to Mars can take up to six months, and that’s only when Mars and Earth are closest in their respective orbits to each other (aka. a Mars Opposition). Resupply missions destined for the Moon will still take a few days to get there, which is certainly an improvement, but still costly.

The Urine Processor Assembly’s (UPA) distillation subsystem used aboard the ISS. Credit: NASA

A system that is regenerative and can provide consumables with minimal (or no) replenishment would not only enable long-duration missions but could also dramatically cut costs for missions operating closer to Earth. Previous upgrades to the UPA increased the overall efficiency of the WPA system, allowing it to reclaim 93 to 94% of all water produced by crew activities. However, NASA technicians hope to achieve a system that can recycle water with 98% efficiency so that the astronauts can reclaim almost all the water they bring with them.

The way the UPA recycles and purifies water is quite simple. First, the reclaimed water passes through a series of special filters and is treated by a catalytic reactor that breaks down any remaining trace contaminants. The system checks the water purity levels using special sensors, adds iodine to prevent microbial growth, and then stores the purified water for crew consumption. Each crew member needs almost 4 liters (one gallon) of daily water for consumption, food preparation, and hygiene (washing, brushing teeth, etc.)

As Jill Williamson, the ECLSS water subsystems manager, explained in a recent NASA press release:

“The processing is fundamentally similar to some terrestrial water distribution systems, just done in microgravity. The crew is not drinking urine; they are drinking water that has been reclaimed, filtered, and cleaned such that it is cleaner than what we drink here on Earth. We have a lot of processes in place and a lot of ground testing to provide confidence that we are producing clean, potable water.”

This distillation process produces purified water and a urine brine as a byproduct, which still contains some reclaimable water. The BPA works by taking the brine produced by the UPA and running it through a special membrane, then hitting the brine with hot, dry air to evaporate the remaining water. This creates humid air that is then reclaimed by the water reclamation system, just like the crews’ exhalation and perspiration. After running tests with the new BRA subsystem, NASA technicians found that the WPA achieved 98% efficiency.

NASA astronaut Kayla Barron replaces a filter in the space station’s Brine Processor Assembly. Credits: NASA

Christopher Brown, who is part of the team at Johnson Space Center that manages the space station’s life support system, explained how this achievement places NASA on track for realizing a regenerative life support system. “This is a very important step forward in the evolution of life support systems,” he said. “Let’s say you collect 100 pounds of water on the station. You lose two pounds of that, and the other 98% just keeps going around and around. Keeping that running is a pretty awesome achievement.”

The systems in ECLSS were carefully tested to ensure they performed as intended and demonstrated that they are reliable and capable of operating long-term without much maintenance or spare parts. This is another important aspect of a life support system for long-duration missions beyond Earth, which is the ability to function without the need for replacing components that will break down and need to be flown from Earth. Said Williamson:

“The regenerative ECLSS systems become ever more important as we go beyond low Earth orbit. The inability of resupply during exploration means we need to be able to reclaim all the resources the crew needs on these missions. The less water and oxygen we have to ship up, the more science that can be added to the launch vehicle. Reliable, robust regenerative systems mean the crew doesn’t have to worry about it and can focus on the true intent of their mission.”

These -characteristics – high efficiency, minimal losses, and sustainability – are also crucial to realizing a life support system that can support crews living far from LEO. In the not-too-distant future, it is hoped that lunar development and exploration will give way to lunar settlements and a thriving economy that includes lunar tourism. Similar plans exist for Mars and other locations far beyond Earth and cis-lunar space, where people will depend on local resources and systems that will likely be bioregenerative to restore themselves and keep functioning.

Further Reading: NASA

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After Decades of Observations Astronomers have Finally Sensed the Pervasive Background Hum of Merging Supermassive Black Holes

We’ve become familiar with LIGO/VIRGO’s detections of colliding black holes and neutron stars that create gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of space-time. However, the mergers between supermassive black holes – billions of times the mass of the Sun — generate gravitational waves too long to register with these instruments.

But now, after decades of careful observations, astronomers around the world using a different type of gravitational wave detection method have finally gathered enough data to measure what is essentially a gravitational wave background hum of the Universe, mostly from supermassive black holes spiraling toward collision.  

Scientists say the newly detected gravitational waves are by far the most powerful ever measured, and they persist for years to decades. They carry roughly a million times as much energy as the one-off bursts of gravitational waves from black hole and neutron star mergers detected by LIGO and Virgo.

“It’s like a choir, with all these supermassive black hole pairs chiming in at different frequencies,” said scientist Chiara Mingarelli, who worked about 190 other scientists with the NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves). “This is the first-ever evidence for the gravitational wave background. We’ve opened a new window of observation on the universe.”

The observatories use the combined power of several radio telescopes. In the US and Canada, the NANOGrav observatories include the now destroyed Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the Very Large Array in New Mexico. This collaboration collected data from 68 pulsars, to effectively form to form a huge type of detector called a pulsar timing array. Astronomers now announced they have found the first evidence of a consistent background hum of long-wavelength gravitational waves that fills the cosmos.

Also reporting similar results is the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA), in collaboration with Indian and Japanese colleagues of the Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA). Observatories there include the Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Germany, the Lovell Telescope of the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United Kingdom, the Nançay Radio Telescope in France, the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy and the Westerbork Radio Synthesis Telescope in the Netherlands.

For this collaboration, 25 years of observing 25 pulsars revealed the gravitational waves with wavelengths much longer than those seen by other experiments.

Pulsars are fast-spinning neutron stars that emit narrow, sweeping beams of radio waves. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

“Pulsars are actually very faint radio sources, so we require thousands of hours a year on the world’s largest telescopes to carry out this experiment,” said Dr. Maura McLaughlin of West Virginia University and co-Director of NANOGrav, in a press release.  “Now, [our] pulsar observations are showing the first evidence for the presence of gravitational waves, with periods of years to decades.”

“We are incredibly excited that after decades of work by hundreds of astronomers and physicists around the world, we are finally seeing the signature of gravitational waves from the distant Universe.,” said Dr. Michael Keith, from the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at The University of Manchester, in another press release. “The results presented today mark the beginning of a new journey into the Universe to unveil some of its unsolved mysteries.

The gravitational wave detections we’ve been reporting on since 2015 by the ground-based LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) and Europe’s Virgo detector are fleeting, high-frequency gravitational waves. A longer, low-frequency signal could be perceived only with a detector much larger than the Earth. By studying the pulsars, astronomers essentially turned our sector of the Milky Way Galaxy into a huge gravitational-wave antenna.  

Pulsars are the ultra-dense remnants of the cores of massive stars following their demise in a supernova explosion. Pulsars spin rapidly, sweeping beams of radio waves through space so that they appear to “pulse” when seen from the Earth. The fastest of these objects, called millisecond pulsars, spin hundreds of times each second. Their pulses are very stable, making them useful as precise cosmic timepieces.

The supermassive black hole binaries at the cores of galaxies produce electromagnetic waves at radio to gamma-ray wavelengths that can be detected by telescopes on Earth and in space. They also produce gravitational waves that can be studied through their effects on an array of radio pulsars. These dual electromagnetic and gravitational wave messengers provide extremely valuable insights that cannot be gleaned from either type of observation alone. Illustration: Olena Shmahalo/NANOGrav.

Supermassive black holes are thought to reside at the centers of the largest galaxies in the Universe. When two galaxies merge, the black holes from each end up orbiting each other as a binary system long after the initial galaxy merger. Eventually, the two black holes will unite. In the meantime, their slow dance around each other stretches and squeezes the fabric of space-time, generating gravitational waves that emanate out like ripples in a pond.

Since they are long-lasting, the gravitational-wave signals from these gigantic binaries are expected to overlap, like voices in a crowd or instruments in an orchestra, producing an overall background hum that imprints a unique pattern in pulsar timing data.

NANOGrav’s results were published in five papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, while papers appeared in other journals from the European, Australian, Indian and Chinese pulsar timing arrays.

The NANOGrav papers report a “strong evidence” of these long, low-frequency signals, reporting the detection at a 3.5- to 4-sigma level, which is less than the 5-sigma threshold that physicists usually want to claim a discovery. But a 4-sigma amplitude is better than the 3.5 sigma from the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The scientists for NANOGrav say they have more than 99% confidence that the signal is real.

But to confirm these measurements, the researchers want to collaborate even further to expand the current datasets to create an International Pulsar Timing Array. This will use the power of an array consisting of over 100 pulsars, observed with thirteen radio telescopes across the world, combining more than 10,000 observations for each pulsar. This should allow the astronomers to obtain solid proof of having detected a pervasive background hum of gravitational waves.

Below are links to the NANOGrav papers:

• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acda9a
• The NANOGrav 15-Year Data Set: Detector Characterization and Noise Budget. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acda88
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acdac6
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Constraints on Supermassive Black Hole Binaries from the Gravitational Wave Background. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acdc91
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acdc91
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Bayesian Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries. DOI: arXiv:2306.16222

Sources: NANOGrav, Simon Foundation, University of Manchester, Yale

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NASA and LEGO Continue Brick-Solid Partnership with Perseverance and Ingenuity LEGO Models

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA-JPL) are busy keeping the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter functioning in Jezero Crater on Mars while these robotic explorers continue the search for ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. But some of those same engineers have also been busy working with LEGO designers on new one-tenth-scale LEGO Technic buildable models of these very same robotic explorers with the goal of inspiring the next generation of NASA scientists and engineers.

The collaborative effort demonstrates NASA’s ongoing commitment on working with the private sector to share ideas and technical expertise through JPL’s Technology Affiliates Program and Caltech’s Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships. For this new STEM-themed LEGO kit, LEGO designers sought to learn about the engineering aspects of both Perseverance and Ingenuity to design and build the most accurate LEGO models.

“Our Mars missions began decades ago with an idea so big; many thought it was impossible. Today, we’ve successfully landed rovers and even a helicopter on Mars to explore the climate, geology, and possibility of life on the Red Planet,” said JPL Director Laurie Leshin in a June 22 statement. “At JPL, we dream big and push boundaries as we seek to answer awe-inspiring scientific questions. I hope these kinds of toys spark the same spirit of exploration within kids that we have here at NASA’s JPL.”

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used the WATSON camera on its robotic arm to capture a selfie with the Ingenuity helicopter on April 6, 2021 from an approximate distance of 3.9 meters (13 feet) from the rover. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

NASA and LEGO have a rich partnership history dating back to the 1990s of designing and building LEGO sets to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. These include models of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander, Space Shuttle Discovery and Hubble, Saturn V, James Webb Space Telescope, Rocket Launch Center, and most recently announced the potential for a LEGO Moon Map.

LEGO figures have even been sent to space, as NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter had LEGO figures of the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno, and Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei attached to the spacecraft. Most recently, four LEGO figures flew on the Artemis I mission.

LEGO figures representing the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno, and Galileo are shown aboard the Juno spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC)

LEGO minifigures posing for a photo in front of the European Service Module that will provide power to the Orion spacecraft on NASA’s Artemis II mission, which is scheduled for a November 2024 flight. Four LEGO minifigures flew on NASA’s Artemis I mission official flight kit, which carried mementos for educational outreach and posterity. (Credit: NASA/Radislav Sinyak)

The Perseverance rover with the Ingenuity helicopter onboard touched down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, and have been instrumental in providing new insights into what ancient Mars might have been like billions of years ago. During its almost two and a half years on the Red Planet, Perseverance has driven 18.87 km (11.72 miles) while collecting samples and dropping sample tubes in preparation for a Mars Sample Return mission one day. The Ingenuity helicopter conducted its first flight on Mars on April 19, 2021, and has completed 51 flights while accumulating 91.4 flying minutes over 11.7 km (7.3 miles) and flying as high as 18.0 m (59.1 ft).

What new LEGO sets will inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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That New Car Smell But for Planets

Remember how a new car smells? It’s a chemical signature of all the materials used to make the car’s interior. What if you could use chemical signatures to learn about newborn planets?

That’s what a team of scientists did for a recent discovery. They used archival observation data of a protoplanetary disk, made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Essentially, they looked for chemical signatures of planet formation around a young star called HD 169142. It has a huge, dusty, gas-rich cloud of material surrounding it that appears to have several planets forming inside. One of those planets is a massive Jupiter-like world called HD 169142 b. That alone makes it a compelling object for study, but astronomers wanted to know more about it and its birthplace. So, they focused ALMA on it and found some amazing chemical signatures related to the gas giant.

Looking for Planets and Finding Chemical Signatures

“When we looked at HD 169142 and its disk at submillimeter wavelengths, we identified several compelling chemical signatures of this recently-confirmed gas giant protoplanet,” said Charles Law, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “We now have confirmation that we can use chemical signatures to figure out what kinds of planets there might be forming in the disks around young stars.”

This is quite different from the usual approaches to searching out exoplanets. Astronomers can look for them by simply searching for visual evidence. But, the view of small exoplanets gets blotted out by the glare of their star. Oftentimes, the larger ones can be spotted. Another approach is to look for the gravitational influences of exoplanets on their stars (the radial velocity method). However, these aren’t so helpful when it comes to finding protoplanets forming around young stars. That’s because they’re often hidden by their birth crêches. So, you need a different approach, using radio and submillimeter telescopes.

ALMA has often been used to study the protoplanetary disks where new worlds are thought to be forming. So, using chemical signatures of molecules that ALMA can detect is a promising new way to find these baby worlds.

ALMA’s high-resolution images of nearby protoplanetary disks, which are results of the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). The observatory is often used to look for planet birth clouds like these and the one around HD 169142. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), S. Andrews et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

Shock Waves Also Reveal More About a Newly Forming Planet

Law and a team of scientists focused ALMA on the HD 169142 system because the Jupiter-sized planet gave them an alternate way to detect and understand it and possibly other planets forming in the cloud. Since it’s a gas giant, they suspected it would have a detectable chemical signature. The measurements traced carbon monoxide (both ¹²CO and ¹³CO) and sulfur monoxide (SO). Those are fairly common and have been found at protoplanets in other disks. So, the team was on the right track.

But, they found something else that surprised them: emissions from a molecule called silicon monosulfide (SiS). This was the first time it had ever been detected in such a disk and came as a surprise. That’s because for it even to be detectable by ALAM, SiS emissions are caused by shocked dust grains releasing their silicate content. They do that when they’re hit by massive shock waves created by collisions with gas that is traveling at high rates of speed. What causes the gas to travel like that? Outflows are somehow driven by giant protoplanets.

“SiS was a molecule that we had never seen before in a protoplanetary disk, let alone in the vicinity of a giant protoplanet,” Law said. “The detection of SiS emission popped out at us because it means that this protoplanet must be producing powerful shock waves in the surrounding gas.”

Opening the View of Planet Formation

This domino effect beginning with outgassing from a giant planet forcing emissions is a useful find. It actually opens a new window on the protoplanet-forming process. It’s not just that it can show the presence of a planet inside a dense birth cloud. It also provides a new way to look at existing planets and their effect on the cloud itself. And, searching out planets via chemical signatures forges a link between newborn worlds and the exoplanets we already know about.

“There’s a huge diversity in exoplanets and by using chemical signatures observed with ALMA, this gives us a new way to understand how different protoplanets develop over time and ultimately connect their properties to that of exoplanetary systems,” said Law. “In addition to providing a new tool for planet-hunting with ALMA, this discovery opens up a lot of exciting chemistry that we’ve never seen before. As we continue to survey more disks around young stars, we will inevitably find other interesting but unanticipated molecules, just like SiS. Discoveries such as this imply that we are only just scratching the surface of the true chemical diversity associated with protoplanetary settings.”

Disk searches for newborns hidden in their creches have resulted in a handful of new discoveries. That’s why this new tool will be so useful. It now gives astronomers another way to look for planets they can’t find using the usual search methods. The science team, headed by Law, has submitted a paper about this method to the journal Astrophysical Letters, for future publication. The tool should open up the search for exoplanets and expand our current population of known worlds beyond the 5445+ already known, and the 9,714+ candidates still to be confirmed.

For More Information

A Surprise Chemical Find by ALMA May Help Detect and Confirm Protoplanets

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Two New Space Telescopes Will Bring Dark Energy Into Focus

Since the 1990s, thanks to observations by the venerable Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have contemplated the mystery of cosmic expansion. While scientists have known about this since the late-1920s and early-30s, images acquired by Hubble‘s Ultra Deep Fields campaign revealed that the expansion has been accelerating for the past six billion years! This led scientists to reconsider Einstein’s theory that there is an unknown force in the Universe that “holds back gravity,” which he named the Cosmological Constant. To astronomers and cosmologists today, this force is known as “Dark Energy.”

However, not everyone is sold on the idea of Dark Energy, and some believe that cosmic expansion could mean there is a flaw in our understanding of gravity. In the near future, scientists will benefit from next-generation space telescopes to provide fresh insight into this mysterious force. These include the ESA’s Euclid mission, scheduled for launch this July, and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), the direct successor to Hubble that will launch in May 2027. Once operational, these space telescopes will investigate these competing theories to see which holds up.

Not Slowing Down

The expansion of the cosmos was discovered by Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître in 1927 and independently by Edwin Hubble in 1929. These observations triggered a debate about the nature of the Universe and whether every galaxy emerged from a single event (aka. the Big Bang Theory) or new galaxies were added over time (the Steady State Hypothesis). The debate would be settled with the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the “relic radiation” of the Big Bang, and improved instruments that allowed astronomers to look deeper into space (and hence, farther back in time).

Over time, astronomers and cosmologists were able to place tighter constraints on the rate at which the cosmos is expanding – known as the Hubble Constant (or the Hubble-Lemaître Constant). But by the 1990s, observations of Type Ia supernovae (used to measure cosmic distances) revealed that the rate began increasing about 8 billion years after the Big Bang. This contradicted the widely-held idea that cosmic expansion would slow over time as gravity would slowly arrest it, eventually causing the Universe to contract – possibly ending in a “Big Crunch.”

Meanwhile, the rate of expansion came to be known as the Hubble-Lemaître Law (or the Hubble-Lemaître Constant). The fact that it has accelerated over time suggests that something is working against gravity (Dark Energy) or that our understanding of how gravity works on the largest of scales is incomplete. For over a century, scientists have looked to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to describe this, but cosmic expansion has led scientists to propose alternate theories – like Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND).

Jason Rhodes, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a deputy project scientist for Roman, is also the U.S. science lead for Euclid. As he explained in a recent NASA press release:

“Twenty-five years after its discovery, the Universe’s accelerated expansion remains one of the most pressing mysteries in astrophysics. With these upcoming telescopes, we will measure Dark Energy in different ways and with far more precision than previously achievable, opening up a new era of exploration into this mystery.”

Infographic comparing the capabilities of the Euclid and Nancy Grace Roman space telescopes. Credits: NASA

Two Observatories

Roman and Euclid will provide separate data streams to fill the gaps in our understanding, hopefully pinning down the cause of cosmic acceleration in the process. This will start with both observatories studying the accumulation of matter using a technique known as “weak gravitational lensing,” where the presence of massive objects in the foreground warps and amplifies light from more distant objects. This phenomenon is predicted by General Relativity, which describes how the curvature of spacetime is altered in the presence of gravitational forces.

In this case, the observatories will look for subtle effects caused by less concentrated masses, like clumps of Dark Matter. This data will be used to make a 3D map of Dark Matter, which is theorized to account for approximately 85% of matter in the known Universe and is what holds galaxies and galaxy clusters together. By mapping the concentrations of Dark Matter, this map will offer clues about the push-pull forces governing our Universe since the gravitational pull of Dark Matter counteracts the expansionary forces of Dark Energy.

The two missions will also study how galaxy clustering has changed from one era to the next. When examining the local Universe, astronomers have noted a pattern in how galaxies are distributed, where any galaxy is twice as likely to have a neighboring galaxy about 500 million light-years away. This distance has grown over time due to the expansion of space, which means that this “preferred distance” has likely changed as well. Seeing how this has varied over time will reveal the expansion history of the cosmos and allow for highly-accurate tests of gravity to see if Dark Energy or MOND is at work.

Roman will also conduct an additional survey of Type Ia supernovae and study how quickly they appear to be moving away from us. Comparing the speed at which they are receding at different distances, scientists will have another means of tracing cosmic expansion and shed light on if and how the influence of Dark Energy has changed over time. They will employ different but complementary strategies to accomplish this and will be much more powerful together than either will be on its own.

NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is now named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, after NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy. Credits: NASA

Euclid will rely on optical and infrared instruments to observe an area measuring approximately 15,000 square degrees (about one-third) – much larger than the area observed by Roman. It will peer back 10 billion years, roughly 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was expanding much slower than it is today. Meanwhile, Roman will study an area measuring about 2,000 square degrees (one-twentieth of the night sky) but in much greater depth and detail. Using its advanced optical and infrared imaging modes, Roman will visualize what the Universe looked like just 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

This will allow Hubble’s successor to examine galaxies that formed during Cosmic Dawn, something the James Webb Space Telescope recently did for the first time. And whereas the Euclid mission will focus exclusively on cosmology, the RST will observe nearby galaxies, stars, and the outer Solar System. These surveys will overlap, allowing scientists to get a “big picture” view of the Universe while simultaneously obtaining highly sensitive and detailed data on individual areas and objects. This will also allow for corrections to be made to Euclid’s surveys, which can be applied to a wider area.

The results will be nothing short of revolutionary, as they will address the most pressing mysteries of modern cosmology and physics. Depending on what they find, Roman and Euclid could confirm that General Relativity and the predominant model of the cosmos – the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model – is correct. On the other hand, they could verify that our models need revision and point the way toward a grand resolution. So it’s either confirmation or resolution. Either way, we can’t lose!

Further Reading: NASA

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What Would the Milky Way Look Like From Afar?

Our understanding of galaxies is rooted in the fact that we can see so many of them. Some, such as the Andromeda and Pinwheel galaxies are fairly close, and others are more distant, but all of them give a unique view. Because of this, we can see how the various types of galaxies appear from different points of view, from face-on to edge-on and all angles in between. But there is one galaxy that’s a bit harder to map out, and that’s our own. Because we are in the galactic plane of the Milky Way, it can be difficult to create an accurate bird’s-eye view of our home galaxy. That’s where a recent study in Nature Astronomy comes in.

For this study, the team wanted to answer the question of what our galaxy would look like when seen from other galaxies. Particularly, what would our chemical spectrum look like? Starting with data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey, the team pulled in other data sources to map out things like stellar age and metallicity throughout the Milky Way. Since our view is limited in some regions of the galaxy, the team extrapolated from what we know of the local galactic regions.

One of the things they discovered is that there is a belt of high metalicity within our galaxy. Like all galaxies, the Milky Way mostly contains hydrogen and helium, but there are traces of other elements (what astronomers call metals) throughout the galaxy. Toward the center of the galaxy, the metallicity is fairly low, but as you move outward from the center the metallicity increase, peaking at around 23,000 light-years from the center. Our Sun is about 26,000 light-years from the center and is in this high metallicity region. Moving further outward, the metallicity drops again. Metallicity inversely correlates with stellar age, so this means the youngest stars of the galaxy are in the middle region. This metallicity signature would be very clear to astronomers in other galaxies.

How the Milky Way might appear from face-on. Credit: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar

It might seem silly to study how aliens would see our galaxy, but the real goal of this study was to be able to compare how our galaxy stacks up to others. Is the Milky Way unusual, or pretty typical? The team used the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey to compare the Milky Way to 321 other galaxies. These galaxies are all face-on from our perspective and have a similar mass and star-formation rate as the Milky Way. They found that about 1% of these galaxies had a similar high-metallicity ring, so our galaxy is fairly unusual in this respect.

The unanswered question is why this might be. One idea is that the metallicity region was triggered by a collision between the Milky Way and another galaxy. There is evidence that our galaxy collided with a large dwarf galaxy about 6 to 10 billion years ago, and this could have triggered a burst of star production. Given that about 1% of galaxies are similar to the Milky Way, this is similar to the fraction of galaxies that likely collided several billion years ago.

Reference: Lian, Jianhui, et al. “The integrated metallicity profile of the Milky Way.” Nature Astronomy (2023): 1-8.

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UK Professor Granted JWST Observation Time to Study Jupiters Upper Atmosphere

A professor from Northumbria University in the North East region of England has been granted telescope time with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) later this year to study Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, also known as its ionosphere. Being granted such access to JWST is extremely competitive which makes getting access to use its powerful instruments to study the cosmos a very high honor.

Dr. Tom Stallard, who is a professor in the Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering department at Northumbria University, is the only scientist who will be granted access to JWST in 2023 for observing planets within our solar system, which will commence on September 7. He hopes to use the most powerful telescope ever built to learn how Jupiter’s ionosphere is affected by both the space environment above and Jupiter’s lower atmosphere beneath it.

Artist rendition of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observing the heavens. (Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez)

“Although Jupiter appears very different to Earth there is actually much we can learn about our own planet by studying Jupiter,” said Dr. Stallard. “The processes going on are very similar, but Jupiter’s magnetic field is much stronger, and stranger. Time on the James Webb Space Telescope is rare – and time to study planets within our solar system is even rarer, so to be given this opportunity is incredibly exciting.”

Dr. Stallard was granted access to JWST through the Space Telescope Science Institute’s General Observer (GO) program, which is broken up into observing cycles and allows scientists and astronomers to apply for telescope time with JWST. The GO program has been slated to encompass the majority of the observation time for JWST, with Cycle 1 running from July 2022 to July 2023 and Cycle 2 commencing immediately thereafter.

Dr. Stallard’s proposal, “Unveiling Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and constraining atmospheric loss from Giant Planets”, was selected for the JWST Cycle 2 GO Program, with the entire list of approved proposals available here. For Dr. Stallard’s study, his team will use JWST to conduct 36 observations of Jupiter’s atmospheric edge, also known as the limb, with 19 of those observations occurring at Jupiter’s dawn and the remainder occurring at Jupiter’s dusk.

Dr. Stallard’s usage of JWST coincides with when NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Jupiter, will be on the opposite side of the planet and pointed at Earth. With JWST being located at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange Point on the opposite side of the Earth’s Moon and pointed at Jupiter, this means Dr. Stallard will have a rare opportunity to examine images taken from both sides of Jupiter simultaneously. The goal of these observations will be to gain a better understanding of Jupiter’s atmospheric loss to space. Along with this, scientists could also gain a better understand about the formation and evolution of exoplanets, since Jupiter is frequently used as an analog for studying gaseous exoplanets.

Professor Tom Stallard (Credit: Simon Veit-Wilson/Northumbria University)

“Securing access to the James Webb Space Telescope is a highly competitive process and is a testament to the quality and timeliness of the research that Professor Stallard undertakes,” said Dr. Louise Bracken, who is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Exchange) at Northumbria University. “This award underlines and builds on the existing work of our Solar and Space Physics researchers at Northumbria University and cements the North East’s reputation as a center of excellence in this field.”

While this opportunity marks the first time Dr. Stallard will be using JWST to observe Jupiter, this will not mark the first time JWST has observed the largest planet in the solar system, as the powerful telescope used its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to capture some breathtaking images of Jupiter in August 2022, including the planet’s rings, auroras, and one of the irregular-shaped moons, Amalthea.

JWST NIRCam composite image from two filters – F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan) – of Jupiter and its many features. (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt)

What new insights will scientists gain about Jupiter’s and its ionosphere from these observations? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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AI Could Help Astronomers Rapidly Generate Hypotheses

Almost anywhere you go on the internet, it seems nearly impossible to escape articles on AI. Even here at UT, we’ve published several. Typically they focus on how a specific research group leveraged the technology to make sense of reams of data. But that sort of pattern recognition isn’t all that AI is good for. In fact, it’s becoming pretty capable of abstract thought. And one place where abstract thought can be helpful is in developing new scientific theories. With that thought in mind, a team of researchers from ESA, Columbia, and the Australian National University (ANU) utilized an AI to come up with scientific hypotheses in astronomy.

Specifically, they did so in the sub-field of “Galactic Astronomy,” which specializes in research surrounding the formation and physics of galaxies. A recently published paper on arXiv mentions that they selected this sub-field because of its “integrative nature,” which requires “knowledge from diverse subfields.”

That sounds exactly like what AI is already good at. But a standard Large Language Model (LLM) like those that have become most familiar recently (ChatGPT, Bard, etc.) wouldn’t have enough subject knowledge to develop reasonable hypotheses in that field. It might even fall prey to the “hallucinations” that some researchers (and journalists) warn are one of the downsides of interacting with the models.

This version of Fraser’s question show deals partially with AI.

To avoid that problem, the researchers, led by Ioana Ciuc? and Yuan-Sen Ting of ANU, used a piece of code known as an application programming interface (API), which was written in Python, known as Langchain. This API allows more advanced users to manipulate LLMs like GPT-4, which serves as the latest basis for ChatGPT. In the researchers’ case, they loaded over 1,000 scientific articles relating to Galactic Astronomy into GPT-4 after downloading them from NASA’s Astrophysics Data System.

One of the researchers’ experiments was to test how the number of papers the model had access to affected its resulting hypotheses. They noticed a significant difference between the suggested hypotheses it developed having access to only ten papers vs. having access to the full thousand.

But how did they judge the validity of the hypotheses themselves? They did what any self-respecting scientist would do and recruited experts in the field. Two of them, to be precise. And they asked them to just the hypotheses based on originality of thought, the feasibility of testing the hypotheses, and the scientific accuracy of its basis. The experts found that, even with a limited data set of only ten papers to go off of, the hypotheses suggested by “Astro-GPT,” as they called their model, were graded only slightly lower than a competent Ph.D. student. With access to the full 1,000 papers, Astro-GPT scored at a “near-expert level.”

Here’s a brief explanation from a NASA scientist on how AI will take astronomy to the next level.
Credit – Museum of Science, Boston YouTube Channel

A critical factor in determining the final hypotheses that were presented to the experts was that the hypotheses were refined using “adversarial prompting.” While this sounds aggressive, it simply means that, in addition to the program that was developing the hypotheses, another program was trained on the same data set and then provided feedback to the first program about its hypotheses, thereby forcing the original program to improve their logical fallacies and generally create substantially better ideas.

Even with the adversarial feedback, there’s no reason for astronomy Ph.D. students to give up on coming up with their own unique ideas in their field. But, this study does point to an underutilized ability of these LLMs. As they become more widely adopted, scientists and laypeople can leverage them more and more to come up with new and better ideas to test.

Learn More:
Ciuc? et al. – Harnessing the Power of Adversarial Prompting and Large Language Models for Robust Hypothesis Generation in Astronomy
UT – I Asked an AI to Dream the Solar System as Food
UT – Is Our Universe Ruled by Artificial Intelligence?
UT – Galileo Sunspot Sketches Versus Modern ‘Deep Learning’ AI

Lead Image:
AI generated image of a data-filled universe
Credit – Midjourney AI (?)

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