Category: Cosmos

pcmag.com

They’ll start in 2025, with a mission to catch a small-satellite-size device remaining from a 2013 mission, and perform controlled atmospheric reentry.
The mission, codename ClearSpace-1, will demonstrate if it’s possible to safely bring back space debris.
This is an important milestone for establishing a new commercial market for cleaning space.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 4, 2020

Glycine, the simplest amino acid and building block of life, can form without energy.
It can happen through “dark chemistry”, which doesn’t need energetic radiation to happen.
Even before stars and planets were formed, glycine could exist in interstellar clouds, forming on icy dust grains.
This finding could suggest that life-creating molecules could be more widespread in the Universe than we previously thought.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on November 20, 2020

Researchers have evidence of water on the sunlit side of the Moon, although it’s only as much as 1% of all water in the Sahara desert.
There are also a lot of shaded areas and pits on the Moon that could potentially hold ice, but this hasn’t been confirmed yet.
NASA plans to go to the Moon in 2024, with the goal to establish a sustainable human presence by 2030, and water on the Moon would help them a lot.
Besides drinking it, scientists could use it to make fuel, enabling new routes to explore space.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on October 30, 2020

nasa.gov

Massive amounts of water and organic molecules, never before seen, discovered in swirling, disk-shaped clouds surrounding young stars.
Young stars are produce life-inducing molecules, and It probably also happened during the formation of the sun and the inner planets of our solar system.
It was discovered through infrared observations of NASA’s airplane telescope, which demonstrates the power of infrared observatories to find simple organic compounds.
Celestial clouds collapse into a rotating disc of gas and dust to form stars, the chemical soup of organic molecules was found in the inner regions of these discs.
Further studies of massive young stars will help scientists understand the processes creating organic molecules.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on October 16, 2020

24 “superhabitable” planets have been identified outside our solar system, all more than 100 light years away.
Some of them are older, a bit bigger, a bit warmer, and might have more water than Earth.
Since new space telescopes are being finalized, these planets might be good candidates for observation.
The planets were chosen by geobiologists and astronomers from 4,500 potentially habitable planets, but we don’t know if they have life yet - only conditions for life.
One of the 24 planets meets four critical characteristics of a superhabitable planet - energy from a sun-like star, the right size, the right mass, and water.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on October 9, 2020

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