Aerospace medicine combines two challenging and important disciplines. This field of study has existed for a century, but it is especially exciting now that commercial space travel and deep space missions are both in the works. What is this unique career? An Overview of Aerospace Medicine Aerospace physicians support the health of people who fly for a living — pilots, aircrews and astronauts, all of whom face unique occupational hazards. These doctors often have military backgrounds, as they need to have training and experience in both medicine and aviation. Here on Earth, doctors often take care of sick or injured patients in normal environments, but in space medicine, the situation is quite the opposite. A big part of this field revolves around preventative medicine, with doctors making sure that their patients are in top health so that they can handle the abnormal environment of flights, especially if their patients are going to space. Much like sports trainers, these doctors make sure that astronauts are physically prepared to perform at the highest levels. According to the Aerospace Medicine Association, aviation medicine was originally driven by the high losses of life due to physically unfit pilots during World War I. Later, the field evolved beyond aviation medicine to include aerospace medicine once crewed space flight began. Today, aerospace physicians, such as flight surgeons, provide medical support for astronauts during training and missions. They also play a role in selecting astronauts for flying on missions, according to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). If astronauts have health issues in space, it is a dangerous and expensive problem to solve. The CSA explains that flight surgeons help during:   Pre-flight, by ensuring that the crew is healthy and prepared to use medical equipment or necessary countermeasures to reduce the negative effects spaceflight can have on their health.  In-flight by maintaining the health of the astronauts and providing 24-hour support at the Mission Control Center.  Post-flight by examining returning astronauts at the landing site and overseeing their rehabilitation as they reacclimate to Earth.  Effects of Space on the Body Space agencies have studied the short- and long-term effects of space environments on the human body. Civilians get a small peek into the effects of flight when they experience conditions such as altitude sickness or the feeling of your ears "popping" during a flight. In space, there's much more to contend with, as leaving the comfortable bubble of our atmosphere creates a range of hazards for humans. NASA describes five categories of stress related to space travel:   Gravity fields. The weightlessness of space affects spatial orientation, head-eye and hand-eye coordination, balance and locomotion. Plus, without gravity, your bones lose minerals, with density dropping at over 1% per month. To counteract this, astronauts must devote two-and-a-half hours each day to exercising in space.  Isolation and confinement. The psychological effects of living at the International Space Station (ISS) or in a space vehicle are just as important as the physical issues. Being confined to a small space over long periods of time can cause behavioral issues among the group, as well as declines in mood and morale, trouble sleeping and boredom.  Hostile/closed environments. It's not healthy to live in a bubble. Microorganisms such as bacteria transfer easily, your immune system is altered, and stress hormones are elevated.  Space radiation. At the International Space Station, astronauts are exposed to ten times the radiation that we experience at home. This poses an increased cancer risk and possible damage to the central nervous system, which can cause problems with cognitive function, motor function and behavioral changes. Space can also cause radiation sickness and degenerative tissue diseases, such as cataracts and cardiac issues.  Distance from Earth. If an astronaut is sick or injured, they can't exactly call 911 for an ambulance ride to the nearest hospital. The simple fact that they are far away from Earth is a health risk. This is a concern on the ISS, but it will be even more critical for future missions to the Moon and Mars. While today's space travelers can at least use telemedicine to speak to doctors from millions of miles away, there will be communication delays.  Space Medicine Career Outlook This highly specialized career helps to support the future of space travel and is crucial to the aerospace industry. The Emergency Medicine Residents' Association suggests that there is a greater need for highly trained aerospace medicine physicians because of the recent focus on an accelerated lunar program and the emerging commercial space flight industry. This medical specialty isn't just about space, either. Many space physicians also study the physiology of microgravity on the human body and how it can help to fight conditions here on Earth, such as NASA's study of astronaut twins Scott and Mark Kelly. Aerospace medicine helps humans push the bounds of what is possible, as we continue to explore the unknown.

The Next Frontier: Aerospace Medicine

Images from the most powerful space telescope are here, and it’s almost as if astronomers have wiped the smudges off their glasses, revealing a clearer view of the early universe.
 
Scientists noticed something new when comparing images from the Hubble Space Telescope with new images from the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). An ancient galaxy called MACS0647-JD might actually be two merging galaxies. The researchers are still early in their discovery process, and NASA points out that their research has not been peer-reviewed yet. Still, their findings offer an exciting peek at the potential discoveries the Webb could reveal about the universe’s origins.
 
“We’re actively discussing whether these are two galaxies or two clumps of stars within a galaxy,” says Dan Coe, an astronomer of AURA/Space Telescope Science Institute for the European Space Agency and Johns Hopkins University. “We don’t know, but these are the questions that Webb is designed to help us answer.”
 
Examining an Ancient Galaxy
 
Coe and his colleagues discovered the galaxy — or potentially merging galaxies — MACS0647-JD about a decade ago with Webb’s predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. But Hubble was designed to primarily observe shorter ultraviolet and visible wavelengths, while Webb is optimized for infrared light. Plus, the Webbis larger and located deeper in space so it can study the earliest and most distant galaxies.
 
“With Hubble, [MACS0647-JD] was just this pale, red dot,” Coe explains. “We could tell it was really small, just a tiny galaxy in the first 400 million years of the universe.”
 
Now, the distant galaxy appears to be two distinct objects: one blue and the other red. Researcher Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao of Johns Hopkins University says, “The blue gas and the red gas have different characteristics. The blue one actually has very young star formation and almost no dust, but the small, red object has more dust inside and is older. And their stellar masses are also probably different.”
 
Gravitational Lensing
 
Part of the reason both Hubble and Webb have been able to observe a galaxy so far, far away is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. According to the Center for Astrophysics, Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains that “gravity bends the path of light, much as it affects the path of massive objects.” The gravity of a very massive object, such as the galaxy cluster MACS0647, can be so intense that it can warp the fabric of space-time. As a result, astronomers can observe the light distortion, and the warped space acts like a magnifying glass.
 
Imagine you want to see one tiny stitch on a quilt that’s stretched overhead. When the quilt is taut, it would be difficult to identify the stitch among the others. However, if someone dropped something heavy, like a bowling ball, onto the quilt right over the stitch, the fabric would bend, and you could get a better look at the particular stitch. (See this Webb video for a more detailed explanation of gravitational lensing.)
 
Future James Webb Telescope Discoveries
 
The news about MACS0647-JD is fascinating because it demonstrates just how much we still don’t know about the early universe.
 
Rebecca Larson of the University of Texas at Austin told NASA, “I think my favorite part is, for so many new Webb image [sic] we get, if you look in the background, there are all these little dots — and those are all galaxies! Every single one of them.” She added, “It’s amazing the amount of information that we’re getting that we just weren’t able to see before. And this is not a deep field. This is not a long exposure. We haven’t even really tried to use this telescope to look at one spot for a long time. This is just the beginning.”
 
Stay tuned for more Webb discoveries in the months and years ahead as we get a better, clearer look at space and the many things in our universe waiting to be found and examined. The road ahead is promising indeed.
 
Being on the forefront of change, especially regarding space, physics and engineering, has been part of the Northrop Grumman culture for generations. Click here to search for jobs in these areas of scientific innovation.
 
 

Webb Reveals Sharper Images of a Galaxy — or Two Merging Galaxies?

Scientists are developing technology to make sustainable space travel possible. As NASA prepares for long term space missions to the moon, Mars and beyond, many challenges remain. The future of space travel requires solutions for long-duration missions with limited resources. They will need access to fuel and the essential elements that sustain life. Scientists recently demonstrated a possible solution by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen in zero gravity using a semiconductor material and light. Challenges for Sustainable Space Travel It's already difficult for astronauts to live at the International Space Station (ISS) and that's a well-established station located nearby in low earth orbit. Longer missions will be even trickier. According to NASA, the ISS uses a system that recycles approximately 90% of the water and 42% of the oxygen in the spacecraft. The system purifies the crew's waste — including urine and sweat — and turns it into potable water for the crew to drink. Still, cargo spacecraft regularly visit the space station to supplement essential supplies and replace some of the system's components. How will future astronauts get the elements they need to survive on long-term space missions? What will fuel their spaceships and the electronic gadgets they'll need onboard? Fuel Cell Space Vehicles The Conversation reports that an international team of researchers demonstrated that it is possible to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water using a semiconductor material and sunlight (or light from any star) in zero gravity. These findings, which are published in Nature Communications, are a step toward long-term space travel with storable, renewable energy. While water may be a relatively heavy supply for space travel, it's a reasonable option because it provides a two-for-one, with hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for astronauts to breathe. Plus, it can be recycled, making sustainable space travel possible. As a bonus, launching a space vehicle loaded with water is safer than the potentially explosive alternative of rocket fuel and oxygen. If this idea is going to be realistic, scientists need to develop a method for splitting water apart and putting it back together again. They're working on how to create water from oxygen and hydrogen, plus the opposite. The Process In space, we don't have the luxury of plants releasing oxygen, but we can mimic photosynthesis. According to the Conversation, water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis, where scientists run an electric current through a water sample that contains a soluble electrolyte. A new version is even better for space travel because it uses lightweight equipment and sunlight (or starlight). While solar power is useful on earth, it's even more abundant in space, where light isn't filtered through an atmosphere. In this alternative method, photo catalysts absorb photons into a semiconductor material in the water. The researchers explain in Nature, "The photoelectrochemical cell consists of an integrated catalyst-functionalized semiconductor system that generates hydrogen." As a bonus that will be especially useful with limited resources in space, the process can be reversed. How to Create Water From Oxygen and Hydrogen The hydrogen and oxygen can be recombined, according to the Conversation, "using a fuel cell returning the solar energy taken in by the photocatalysis." This energy can be used to power electronics, and it produces water that can be reused. Drop Tower Testing To test their system, the researchers dropped their experiment down a 120-meter tower. As the object accelerated toward Earth, the "drop tower" simulates microgravity by creating an opposite effect to the G forces that astronauts experience during lift-off. The Bubble Problem While the researchers did successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen in this microgravity environment, a big challenge popped up: bubbles. When the water is split to create gas, bubbles form. On Earth, gravity causes the bubbles to float to the surface, but in zero gravity the bubble lurks near the catalyst, blocking the next potential bubble, and therefore obstructing overall gas production. They attempted to fix the bubble problem by creating pyramid-shaped zones on the catalyst so that the bubble could easily move from the pointed tip and float away. But even though this forced the bubbles away from the catalyst, without gravity, they remain in the liquid and create a pesky foam that blocks the catalyst and electrodes, making the whole system inefficient. Despite these remaining challenges, the new water-splitting method proves that there's great potential for sustainable space travel in the future. Advanced technology and creative scientific processes can make the most of limited resources, on Earth and in space.

Recycling in Zero Gravity for Sustainable Space Travel

Scientists and curious people all over the planet have dreamt of interplanetary travel. Is this sci-fi trope finally within our grasp? NASA saw great success with its DAWN mission, which explored the giant asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. The DAWN mission successfully hopped from one extraterrestrial destination to another, potentially laying the groundwork for exploring multiple planets in future missions. Success of DAWN NASA's robotic DAWN spacecraft, developed by Northrop Grumman, achieved several major milestones in its 11 years of spaceflight. According to NASA, DAWN was the first spacecraft to:   Orbit two planetary bodies  Orbit an object in the main asteroid belt  Visit a dwarf planet  It collected data and images about Vesta and Ceres, two bodies that scientists barely understood before the mission. "There was some expectation based on observations done by earth telescopes or Hubble, but we really didn't know what we would find at either of these places until we got there," says Joe Makowski, DAWN Operations Program Manager. The spacecraft launched in 2007 and made the slow but steady trek to the asteroid belt. It orbited Vesta from mid-2011 until 2012, then spent the next three years traveling to Ceres. It studied Ceres from 2015 through 2018, and though the mission has been completed, scientists are still making new discoveries from the 100,000 images that DAWN collected. By getting a closer look at bodies in the asteroid belt, scientists confirmed that asteroids, protoplanets and dwarf planets are much more than a bunch of giant space rocks. They are diverse astronomical bodies that hold evidence of how the early solar system was organized and evolved. The mission revealed that Vesta's surface contains a historical record of the many thousands of impacts it has seen since it formed, and that it has trace amounts of water, which was unexpected.  In August 2020, NBC News reported that the latest scientific analysis revealed that Ceres is more geologically active than scientists previously thought. DAWN revealed that it has surface features such as huge salt-domes, muddy 'ice-volcanos,' and potentially some liquid saltwater beneath the surface. This reinforced the idea that dwarf planets like Ceres could have previously hosted sub-surface oceans — and possibly still do — according to NASA. Ion Propulsion The key to visiting multiple places in the solar system in one mission is having an efficient propulsion system for the spacecraft. While many other spacecraft are powered by chemical propulsion, DAWN used solar electric propulsion — using solar power to drive its ion engines — provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dawn's solar electric propulsion was about ten times more efficient than chemical propulsion, requiring only a tenth of the propellant to go the same distance. So, does that mean that ion propulsion is the technical key to interplanetary travel? Perhaps. Ion propulsion worked especially well for a mission like DAWN that required orbiting two different bodies, because the bodies were close enough to the sun. It could have limitations in other scenarios. "Solar electric propulsion works well until you get somewhere around Jupiter and Saturn," Makowski explains. He adds, "Those planets are so far from the sun, where solar energy is so limited, that you need another electrical power source." Lessons for the Future of Space Travel Ion propulsion with new power sources may be the silver bullet for interplanetary space travel, with lessons from DAWN providing the foundation for future missions. "Another big challenge with planetary missions is fault management," says Makowski. This means making sure that if something goes wrong with the spacecraft's hardware, the software can detect the problem and make adjustments to correct these failures. This is critical for interplanetary travel where the spacecraft are too far from Earth for constant communication. As Makowski says, "If you're supposed to be thrusting and you're not, and you don't talk to Earth for five days, the spacecraft won't be in the place in the sky where you expect it to be." He explains that over the course of the 11-year mission, the fault management system helped the spacecraft safely recover from any issues that arose. During the handful of issues that happened during the mission, ground crews could adjust trajectories and get DAWN back on track with plenty of propellant to spare, aided by the ion propulsion system's efficiency. According to Makowski, the team that designed and built DAWN have already used variants of the electric propulsion and fault management systems for:   Communication satellites  A proposed mission to fly to a comet  The Cygnus cargo spacecraft that resupplies the International Space Station  The mission extension vehicle (MEV), a new vehicle that flies to orbiting satellites to refuel them.  Space exploration is a time-consuming and expensive endeavor. Each mission builds on the last, allowing us to become more efficient in our exploration. As we learned from Dawn, harnessing lessons from today's missions, allows us to develop a greater understanding of our place in the history of the solar system. "An achievement like DAWN just opens us up to a universe of possibilities," says Makowski. "You can look back and say - we learned something from that project — more than we ever expected."

Interplanetary Travel Lessons From DAWN

Even as most of modern communication on Earth is moving toward 5G and broadband internet, space communications remain stuck in the 1990s. Satellites, probes and crafts, such as the International Space Station, rely on radio waves. And though radio waves share the electromagnetic spectrum with the same frequencies that make up 5G, they have limited capacity and diffuse over large distances. There is limited radio spectrum, and the signals can be received by unwanted listeners. Radio is also slow. It takes about 2.5 seconds to send data to the Moon and back to Earth, several minutes from Mars and likely hours from the outer solar system, as Space Flight Insider notes. If humans are to usher in a new era of exploration to the Moon and Mars, beefing up space communication technology on satellites and spacecraft will be essential. Lasers are the solution. These beams of invisible infrared light are more robust than radio waves and maintain signal strength over vast distances. The wavelengths are also 10,000 times shorter than radio waves, which means laser pulses can pump out more information per second. That could make data transfer rates 10 to 100 times faster, as FiveThirtyEight reports. A handful of national agencies, including NASA, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), are all embarking on projects to put laser communication systems into orbit. The technology will improve data-transfer rates and lay the foundation for future missions to the Moon and beyond. Mona Lisa on the Moon Ever since the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, was launched into space 61 years ago, radio waves have been the go-to means of communication. But in 2013, NASA scientist Xiaoli Sun and his team used a laser to beam a digital image into space. They sent Leonardo da Vinci's iconic painting, Mona Lisa, to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which circles the Moon. To do it, they first divided the image into a grid that was 152 pixels side by 200 pixels tall. Each pixel was converted into a shade of gray that was represented by a number between zero and 4,095. One by one, the pixels were transmitted to the LRO with a laser pulse sent in one of 4,096 possible time slots. An instrument on the orbiter pieced together the image based on the arrival times of the laser pulses from Earth. Although the data rate was only 300 bits, or 0.0003 megabits, per second, the experiment set the stage for the agency's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), which will use lasers to beam data to and from a satellite. Technologies currently in development will be tested on two upcoming NASA missions. The first is called ILLUMA-T, which stands for the Integrated LCRD Low-Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal. Scheduled for 2021, ILLUMA-T will be a fully operational end-to-end laser communications system that will be tested onboard the International Space Station. Another mission, called Optical to Orion (O2O), will use an optical modem to send high-definition video from NASA's first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft, scheduled for 2023, as Space Flight Insider reports. In tandem, NASA scientists will also be developing a suite of laser-based instruments called the Deep Space Optical Communications package. These instruments are planned for the upcoming Psyche mission, a low-cost probe that will launch by 2023 and travel to the asteroid known as 16 Psyche, found between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft will analyze the rock body using an onboard imager, magnetometer and gamma-ray spectrometer, and it will transmit the data back to Earth using a laser-based communication system. In a NASA press statement, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the principal investigator for the Psyche mission, said "the technology is mind-blowing and it brings out all my inner geek. Who doesn't want to communicate using lasers, and multiply the amount of data we can send back and forth?" Space Data Highway Although NASA was the first to beam a digital image into space, the ESA was the first to establish an optical link in space. In 2001, the satellite Artemis used a laser signal to connect with the Earth observation craft, SPOT 4. The agency soon began setting two-way distance records for laser communication and, by 2008, had transmitted image data 28,000 miles between two satellites at a speed of 600 megabits per second, according to the ESA. These early milestones paved the way for the European Data Relay System (EDRS), a laser communication infrastructure designed to deliver high bandwidth capability for Earth observation satellites as well as other spacecraft, such as the International Space Station. Dubbed the "Space Data Highway," this infrastructure is the world's first optical network in the sky based on laser technology. It's made of two geostationary spacecrafts — with a third on the way — that orbit Earth at an altitude of about 22,000 miles. Their orbits match the orbit of the Earth, so they're always fixed over the same location down below. That location has a network of ground stations that can transmit data at a rate of 1.8 Gbit/s — about three times faster than a radio connection, according to Wired. The high-speed, high-capacity links are designed to serve spacecraft. Satellites that monitor Earth, for instance, orbit the planet lower than those in geostationary orbit and are never over the same location for very long. They typically relay the data they've collected when they're in a direct line of sight with a ground antenna, which occurs about once every 100 minutes. "That can be a problem when you need information immediately, for example, when trying to provide aid during flooding or wild fires, or help ships navigating through ice sheets," Michael Witting, EDRS project manager said in an ESA press briefing. If these crafts transmit their data to the EDRS, the information can be sent immediately to researchers on Earth. Since the ESA's relay system entered service in 2016, it has achieved more than 20,000 laser connections and downloaded more than 1 petabyte of data. The EDRS will soon start transmitting data from the International Space Station, and it's available to be used by crewed missions to the Moon and beyond. Tune in Tokyo Compact discs seem as old school today as land lines and CRT televisions. But the laser technology inside hasn't died. It's going to space. Sony, which released the world's first CD player in 1982, has partnered with JAXA to establish a long-distance laser communication system in space. The system will eventually support real-time communication between satellites, as well as between them and ground stations. JAXA's and Sony's interest lies in supporting future constellations of satellites that will beam broadband internet from Earth's orbit to the ground. Unimpeded by terrestrial obstacles, such as mountains or oceans, these orbiting spacecraft will be able to send internet everywhere. "Specifically, it can be used as a means of communication between the Earth and the International Space Station, the Moon, and Mars. There is a wide range of potential applications, such as communication with the Moon rovers," Koichi Wakata, a JAXA vice president, said in a press statement. As a first step toward creating the system, the partners sent a microwave-sized package in September 2019 to the International Space Station. Called SOLISS, for Small Optical Link for International Space Station, the device not only has optical communication capabilities but a 360-degree spherical camera to observe the laser tests, too. Any photos taken can be sent to the ground using SOLISS's laser communication. JAXA and Sony should be releasing news of their demonstration in early 2020. Putting lasers into orbit will increase the amount and speed of data that can be sent between satellites, as well as between them and the Earth. Although the technology is just beginning to emerge as a potential rival to radio waves, it could be years before it's making its mark. But traveling vast distances along trajectories as straight as an arrow, lasers could one day deliver high-definition video from the Moon, Mars and planets as far away as Jupiter and Saturn. 

Future Satellites and Spaceships Will Communicate with Lasers

Researchers have discovered a solar radio burst with a signal pattern comparable to the Sun's heartbeat. What does cardiology have to do with astronomy? The familiar lub-dub sound of a heart is a rhythmic pattern caused by electrical signals stimulating the heart muscle to contract. Similarly, the radio bursts feature a signal pattern reminiscent of a heartbeat.
An Electromagnetic Discovery
The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is a range of wavelengths of EM radiation covering a wide spectrum from short gamma- and X-rays to longer waves, such as infrared, radio and microwaves. The human eye can only see a small portion of the spectrum (visible light), but scientific instruments, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, can capture invisible radiation that astronomers use to understand the universe.
An international team of researchers from institutions in China, Germany, the United Kingdom and New Jersey detected the solar radio burst by studying microwave imaging observations from a telescope in California called the Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array. They reported their findings in Nature Communications.
The study describes a solar radio burst, an intense burst of radio waves from the Sun. These bursts can feature signals with repeating patterns, and the signal pattern comes from within a solar flare more than 5,000 kilometers (~3,107 miles) above the Sun's surface.
What Is a Solar Flare?
Solar flares are a type of powerful explosion from the surface of the Sun. According to Live Science, solar flares are intense bursts of EM radiation generated in the layers of sparse, hot gas that comprise the Sun's atmosphere.
The researchers have labeled this particular solar flare as a C5.9 class, which is a medium-sized explosion on the immense scale of the universe. For context, the most powerful solar flares are equivalent to the energy of a billion hydrogen bombs, which is enough energy to power the world for 20,000 years, according to NASA.
What Causes Solar Flares?
The big yellow ball in the sky is a mixture of hydrogen and helium held together by the force of gravity. But there is another fundamental force at work: electromagnetism, which involves the interaction of electric currents and magnetic fields. This force causes matter to behave in certain ways, and when it comes to the Sun, magnetic energy sometimes builds up in the atmosphere and is suddenly released as a solar flare.
Most of the energy released by solar flares is in the ultraviolet and X-ray part of the EM spectrum at shorter wavelengths and higher energies than visible light. These events are not unusual. The Sun's magnetic field drives a solar cycle, which is a period of solar activity that lasts approximately 11 years, according to Space.com.
How Solar Flares Affect Earth
The recent discovery of "the Sun's heartbeat" can help astronomers understand more about electromagnetism and how it affects activity in the universe and space weather in general.
"The discovery is unexpected," said Sijie Yu, the study's corresponding author and astronomer affiliated with the New Jersey Institute of Technology Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. "This beating pattern is important for understanding how energy is released and is dissipated in the Sun's atmosphere during these incredibly powerful explosions on the Sun. However, the origin of these repetitive patterns, also called quasi-periodic pulsations, has long been a mystery and a source of debate among solar physicists."
Fortunately, Earth's atmosphere protects our bodies from solar flares and similar solar activity. However, these events can affect technology on Earth because they can inhibit radio communications and GPS navigation. They can reach Earth in just about eight minutes — the amount of time it takes light to travel from the Sun to our planet — so the more we understand about solar flares, the better we can prepare.
As NASA and other space agencies prepare to send crews into space, a deeper understanding of solar activity will be crucial for safety as astronauts travel without the atmosphere's protection.
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The Sun&#8217;s Heartbeat: A Solar Radio Burst

With the weather on Earth getting more extreme by the day, you might think you have enough to worry about. But did you know there are storms in space, too?
A solar storm is an eruption of mass and energy that occurs at the surface of the sun. These solar storms can go on for as little as a few minutes or as long as several hours. They can even impact Earth in a significant way, but that begs the question: Could a solar storm hit Earth? Let's take a look at space weather and how it can affect us.
What Are Solar Storms?
With our naked eyes, the sun can appear static, placid and constant. But in reality, our sun is an enormous thermonuclear reactor, which fuses hydrogen atoms into helium and produces million-degree temperatures and intense magnetic fields. The outer layer of the sun is like a pot of boiling water, with bubbles of hot, electrified gas — electrons and protons in a fourth state of matter known as plasma — that circulate up from the interior and burst out into space.
Scientists believe that high-energy charged particles are released from the sun by solar flares that pour out from the surface of the sun and by shocks that form at the front of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). This means our sun bathes the earth as well as the rest of our solar system with electrically charged particles and magnetic fields. These solar bursts are a form of space weather.
A solar burst of magnetic energy can include solar flares, high-speed solar winds, solar energetic particles and CMEs. A large CME can contain a billion tons of matter that can be accelerated to several million miles per hour in a spectacular explosion. Solar material streams out through the interplanetary medium, impacting any planet or spacecraft in its path. A CME cloud can also erupt from the sun in any direction, but a CME will only impact Earth when it occurs on the side of the sun that faces us. In other words, for a solar storm to hit Earth and cause an impact, the CME cloud would need to be aimed at us.
When a CME cloud plows through the solar wind, high-velocity solar energetic particles can be produced, and because they are charged, they must follow the magnetic field lines that pervade the space between the sun and the earth. Therefore, only the charged particles that follow magnetic field lines that intersect with Earth will result in impacts.
How Space Weather Impacts Earth
When the charged particles from a solar storm follow the magnetic field lines all the way to Earth, they collide with Earth's magnetic field and trapped radiation belts, which can cause an aurora. An aurora forms when magnetic particles in the solar wind interact with Earth's magnetosphere.
These same particles can also produce their own magnetic fields, which can modify our magnetic field. The amount of the sun's geomagnetic activity varies over 11-year cycles, which means there are times when solar activity and solar storms are more frequent. We know this because people have been observing auroras and drawing pictures of them for thousands of years.
But are auroras dangerous? Modern society depends on technologies that are indeed susceptible to the extremes of space weather. Strong electrical currents driven along Earth's surface during aurora events can affect compass readings and contribute to the corrosion of oil and gas pipelines. A particularly strong solar storm could have serious effects, such as electrical surges that knock out the power grid, which can lead to brownouts and blackouts, or disrupt cell phone service.
Changes in the ionosphere during geomagnetic storms can also interfere with high-frequency radio communications and Global Positioning System navigation. The effect of these geomagnetic storms can linger in Earth's magnetosphere and atmosphere for days or even weeks.
As society's reliance on technological systems grows, so does our vulnerability to solar storms. The ultimate goal in studying space weather is to gain the ability to foretell events and conditions on the sun that could produce harmful societal and economic effects with sufficient accuracy and far enough in advance to allow preventive or mitigating actions to be taken.
So, could a solar storm hit Earth? In short, yes — these storms can affect us, but it's not quite as intense as you might imagine.
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Could a Solar Storm Hit Earth?

Valentine's Day 2046 may be a memorable occasion — beyond roses and chocolates, it could feature a 50-meter-wide asteroid trying to make a move on Earth. Thankfully, the odds are in our favor.
 
When Is an Asteroid Next Predicted to Hit the Earth?
 
According to NASA, asteroid 2023 DW will make its approach on February 14, 2046. Current predictions put its closest distance to Earth at 4,730,285 kilometers. Considering that the moon orbits about 360,000 km away, this should give us plenty of room to spare.
 
Still, the announcement of this close call sparked some concern about a potential collision. Given that the asteroid is 49.13 meters in diameter and currently moving at 21.78 km/s relative to the sun, this worry isn't entirely misplaced: If 2023 DW comes into contact with Earth, it could level a small city.
 
By putting this in perspective, however, it's possible to get a better sense of the risk. First, it's worth noting that asteroids are continually hitting Earth's atmosphere, according to NASA. The vast majority are so small they burn up on impact. Large asteroids may leave behind bright trails as they disintegrate, but very few actually reach the surface. For example, in 2013, an asteroid the size of a small building hit the atmosphere above Chelyabinsk, Russia. While it broke up 20 kilometers above the ground, smaller pieces of it did reach the ground as meteorites.
 
If you're looking for a bigger bang, you need to go back about 35 million years, according to Live Science. That's when an asteroid slammed into what's now Chesapeake Bay, giving the bay its curved western shoreline.
 
So, when is an asteroid next predicted to hit the earth, and should we be worried? To sum it up, asteroid hits are common. Larger strikes are rare. Big strikes are once-in-35-million-year events.
 
Course Correction: How to Navigate a NEO
 
Asteroid 2023 DW is known as a near-Earth object (NEO) because it's less than 150 meters wide and will pass relatively close to Earth. Objects bigger than 150 meters that cross Earth's path are known as potentially hazardous objects (PHOs).
 
While there's no way for 2023 DW to get bigger before it comes back around toward Earth, there is a possibility it could change course. This is because no object in the solar system has a perfectly circular orbit. Instead, planets and asteroids alike take elliptical paths around the sun. This deviation from circular is known as eccentricity. A perfectly circular orbit would have an eccentricity of 0 — the higher the number, the more elliptical an object's orbit.
 
According to NASA data, 2023 DW has an orbital eccentricity of 0.396. Compare this to the moon, which has an eccentricity of 0.055, or Earth's, which is just 0.017, and it's clear that the orbit of this NEO is substantially more elliptical than its planetary counterparts. This means that, at certain points in its orbit, it will be much closer (or farther away) from the sun, the planets and other asteroids. It's during these close approaches that the asteroid could see speed or course changes, which would require NASA to update its likely path.
 
That said, NASA isn't waiting for these changes to happen — the organization is continually tracking multiple asteroid orbits to determine their potential risk. One of the most important factors in orbit accuracy is time. More time observing means more accurate measurements, and since DW 2023 is more than 20 years away from its closest approach, there's plenty of time for tracking.
 
Why We Won't End Up Like the Dinosaurs
 
Warnings of a possible, if improbable, asteroid impact raise a familiar question: What about the dinosaurs? Despite our ability to see asteroids coming, could we end up on the receiving end of an extinction event? In a word, no.
 
First, consider the size of the asteroid that created the Chicxulub Crater more than 66 million years ago. Estimates put it at around 180 kilometers across, which is orders of magnitude larger than 2023 DW. In addition, current modeling suggests this asteroid will miss Earth completely. Even if its trajectory changes, scientists will have plenty of warning.
 
Of course, that leads to another question: What happens if it's heading straight for us? The good news is that NASA has several strategies to keep these cosmic intruders at bay. One option is to fly a spaceship alongside the asteroid and use the gravitational pull of the ship to nudge the asteroid slightly off course. Given the massive distances involved, even a small change could mean a complete miss. It may also be possible to launch nuclear explosives onto an asteroid and then detonate them, resulting in a course change. Unsurprisingly, NASA recommends doing this at the farthest distance possible.
 
While both options remain untested, the space agency recently conducted a real-world experiment with its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). DART used what's known as kinematic impact, which is a fancy way of saying NASA slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid at high speed. The asteroid they chose was Dimorphos, which is 160 meters in diameter and orbits another asteroid, Didymos. Both orbit the sun every 2.1 years but are not threats to Earth.
NASA scientists hoped the collision would shorten Dimorphos's orbit by 10 minutes, but DART outperformed expectations, reducing the rock's orbital time by 32 minutes. This is good news for DW 2023 — not only is it more than 23 years away, it's also less than one-third the size of the successful DART case.
 
The takeaway here is simple: Go ahead with your Valentine's Day 2046 plans. Asteroid DW 2023 has a 99.82% chance of passing harmlessly by our planet. In the very unlikely event that it does decide to make a move on Earth, we've got ships, nukes and DARTs we can toss its way to send it packing.
 
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Asteroid 2023 DW: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Close Call

For more than a decade, NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars, analyzing the surface of Gale Crater, where a lake once existed in the early days of Mars. Recent study of both new and old Curiosity images has revealed signs that, long after the lake itself dried up, enough underground water remained in the former lakebed to form the semiprecious gemstone opal

An opal gemstone found on Mars evokes classic science fiction images of grizzled Martian prospectors searching for mother lodes and fending off claim jumpers. While people may one day wear jewelry from Mars, the current excitement isn't about bling; as Space.com reports, it could be a sign of a substance on Mars that's even more precious than opal gemstones: water.

The first hints of opal gemstones on Mars, according to Metal Tech News, were detected as early as 2008 by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but these early detections from space gave no hints of the concentration level of "opal-like minerals" that might be found on Mars.

Observing a Network of Fracture Halos

The Curiosity rover has provided much closer views of a type of feature called a fracture halo: an area of lighter-colored material surrounding fractures in a rock surface. The lighter coloring of the halo is the sheen of opal, essentially the same sheen that makes opal a semiprecious stone.
As fracture halos continued to turn up in the images sent back from Curiosity, it became clear to mission scientists that not only was gemstone discovered on Mars, but these fractures were also widespread on the planet. A search back through the archive of images already taken by Curiosity showed even more.

Says researcher Travis Gabriel, per Interesting Engineering, "Our new analysis of archival data showed striking similarity between all of the fracture halos we've observed much later in the mission. Seeing that these fracture networks were so widespread and likely chock-full of opal was incredible."

Seeing Through Rock With Neutrons

While most of Curiosity's instruments, like its cameras, were intended for investigation of the immediate surface, it carries one instrument that could be used to "see" down into the subsurface fractures that the halos surround. This instrument, called Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN), measures the speed of neutrons that are kicked off the surface of Mars by high-energy cosmic rays from space. The DAN readings, according to Live Science, have shown that some of the neutrons detected have been slowed down by interacting with hydrogen atoms — a telltale sign of the presence of water.
Opal gemstones are formed by a solution of silica and water; on Earth, this formation process can take place in hot springs or on the seabed. Today, the open surface of Mars, which is nearly unprotected by its thin atmosphere, is fiercely hostile to life, bombarded by the same radiation that kicks loose the neutrons detected by DAN. This has been the case throughout the "modern" era of Mars, which extends back some 2.9 billion years. But even a slight distance underground — for example, in a rock fracture — conditions would have been far more benign. If enough water remained in the fractures to form opals, even millions of years after the lake above had evaporated, life may also have persisted there.

The Implications of Finding Water on Mars

Opal gemstones, and the water that helped to form them, have breathtaking implications for the ongoing search for life on Mars. Some of the effects will be almost immediate. Even as Curiosity continues exploring Gale Crater, another NASA Mars rover, Perseverance, is currently exploring another crater that was an ancient lakebed: Jezero Crater. Its mission is now being adjusted to look for signs of fracture halos and opals in Jezero Crater.

Looking forward, the widespread presence of opal found on Mars could provide a boon for future missions, in addition to being a research objective. The reason is that, in spite of being a gemstone, opal is technically not quite a "mineral." It does not have a rigid crystal structure, and with proper processing, some of the water in it can be recovered. According to EarthSky, researchers estimate that a single square meter of fracture halo material, down to a depth of one foot, could contain a gallon and a half of recoverable water.

The polar regions of Mars were already known to be rich in water ice, while Gale Crater is near the Martian equator. If recoverable subsurface water is widely available in equatorial regions of Mars, it could be a boon for astronauts during future long-term missions to Mars. This, in turn, could bring us another step closer to wearing bling from Mars.

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Opal Gemstone Found on Mars: Another Sign of Martian Water

An announcement by NASA in January 2023 introduced exoplanet discovery TOI 700 e to the world and brought the astronomical term "habitable zone" back to the daily news. But what is it, and why should we care? And what makes TOI 700 e an exciting find?
Searching the Galactic Habitable Zone
Knowing that there's another potential home for us out there in the universe is a comforting thought. As a species, we're also prone to wonder if we're alone in the universe. Is there other intelligent life out there like us?
Searching habitable zones for Earth-like planets is a mix of curiosity and self-preservation. The first home-away-from-home planet outside our solar system was discovered in 1992, followed in 2017 by the discovery of seven planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, which is named after the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile that first viewed them.
What is a Habitable Zone?
But what is a habitable zone exactly? The definition of "Earth-like" helps define what makes a zone beyond our solar system habitable. These exoplanets are defined as capable of supporting life, so therefore, they must possess liquid water on their surface and have oxygen in the atmosphere.
Water is definitely the holy grail in the hunt for exoplanets. Criteria for remote life detection also include carbon dioxide and, as described by a research article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biomarker gases (such as methane) that living organisms might produce.
With the definition "capable of supporting life" comes a strict set of conditions that must be met on the exoplanet surface. Including gases and liquid water, the planet must also be the right temperature, avoiding extremes that are too hot or too cold. This translates into the planet being neither too close nor too far from its star.
In other words, the orbit must be in a sweet spot, also known as a Goldilocks zone, for life to (theoretically) flourish. For example, The Planetary Society notes that only three of the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets lie in the system's galactic habitable zone.
From Earth to Exoplanets
The most recently discovered exoplanet, TOI 700 e, is an Earth-like rocky planet orbiting star TOI 700. It was found a few years after TOI 700 d, which was spotted in 2020 in the same system by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TESS surveys stars looking for changes in their brightness that signal when a planet passes or transits in front of them. Since they take up more space and block more light, larger planets are easier to spot. From this data, astronomers can calculate a planet's size and orbit around its star and glean more details of what the planet probably looks like.
The reason TOI 700 e is causing excitement is that, along with TOI 700 d, it makes TOI 700 one of only a few systems containing a cluster of habitable-zone planets. This might be due to the nature of the star at the center — it's classified as an M dwarf star, which makes it cooler and smaller than the sun in our solar system. According to NASA, these red dwarfs tend to yield better results, since most of the exoplanets similar in size to Earth have been found orbiting them. Compared to our sun, M dwarfs are much more common, being cooler and less luminous, and so, the habitable zone tends to be closer to the star.
The type of star can also influence whether or not life might flourish on a nearby planet. Space notes that red dwarf stars can be very volatile and send potentially sterilizing bursts of energy at planets within their habitable zones. TOI 700 is described as a "quiet star," meaning its Goldilocks zone might be just right for life to take hold and flourish on one of its planets.
Writing in The Conversation, the team that discovered the TOI 700 system notes that, since this star is relatively close to Earth, it gives a great opportunity to study how Earth-like planets evolve and support life. As exoplanet research evolves, this could help the search for life elsewhere.
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What Is a Habitable Zone, and Why Does It Matter?

Astronomers have found 208 stars scattered across the outermost reaches of the Milky Way galaxy. The most distant of them, which is more than a million light-years away from Earth, exists at the very edge of the galaxy, nearly half the distance to the Milky Way's largest cosmic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.
Could this lead to future advancements in our knowledge of space? Let's find out by digging deeper into this exciting discovery.
Discoveries at the Edge of the Milky Way
As Space.com reports, this new trove of stellar discoveries shares two striking and distinctive features. One is that the discovery piggybacks on research that targeted galaxies lying far beyond the edge of the Milky Way: the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, which are many millions of light-years away, centered on the enormous galaxy M87.
This project is known as the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS), according to Sci.News, and uses the powerful Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), located on Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. The NGVS was not looking for stars in our own galaxy — or even at the edge of the galaxy — but the powerful telescope detected them in the line of sight to the Virgo Cluster.
Stars at the distant edge of the galaxy are visible only as points of light even in the most powerful telescope, but the second notable characteristic of the 208 stars, known as RR Lyrae variables, is that they regularly change in brightness, following a distinctive pattern. When graphed, the pattern looks like an EKG of the human heartbeat. Raja GuhaThakurta, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and doctoral advisor to Ph.D. student Yuting Feng, who led the research, describes these stars as ""the heartbeats of the galaxy.""
Measuring the Luminosity of Distant Stars
While the EKG-like rhythm of pulsating RR Lyrae variables is striking, what really catches astronomers' attention is that, per ScienceDaily, these stars serve as ""standard candles."" RR Lyrae stars all have nearly the same pulsation rhythm and — most important of all — the same range of actual brightness.
This means that once you've observed an RR Lyrae variable carefully enough to make out its heartbeat rhythm, you can figure out how bright it really is. This is what astronomers call its luminosity. Then, by simply comparing its luminosity to how bright it looks through the CFHT, Feng and his research team could get a precise readout of how far away it is.
All 208 newly discovered RR Lyrae variables are a long way off. They range in distance from 65,000 light-years to 1.05 million light-years away. The most distant of these stars is nearly half the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy, which is about 2.5 million light-years away.
""We were able to use these variable stars as reliable tracers to pin down the distances,"" says Feng, as quoted by Gizmodo. ""Our observations confirm the theoretical estimates of the size of the halo, so that's an important result.""
Doctoral advisor GuhaThakurta adds, ""Our galaxy and Andromeda are both so big, there's hardly any space between the two galaxies.""
Tracing a Dim, Massive Vastness
When we think about galaxies, we naturally think mainly of their bright regions, especially the dramatic and colorful spiral arms that we see in images of Andromeda and other external galaxies. We can't directly observe the spiral pattern of our own galaxy, but our from-the-inside-looking-out view of its spiral arms gives us the visible Milky Way in the night sky.
Like other big spiral galaxies, our galaxy has a complex structure that not only includes a bright core (centered on a supermassive black hole) and disk with spiral arms but also extends far beyond into much dimmer inner and outer halo regions. The outer halo is exceedingly dim, and its stars are thinly scattered across an enormous volume of space, yet it contains most of the mass of our galaxy. Nearly all of this mass is in the form of dark matter, which is invisible to any instrument we have but detectable because its enormous mass holds together everything else we can see.
The outer halo of our galaxy and its counterparts in other galaxies are key to tracing and understanding the structure of the universe as a whole. This gives those 208 newly found RR Lyrae variables a unique significance as markers of an otherwise-hidden cosmic structure.
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At the Edge of the Galaxy, Astronomers Have Found &#8220;Standard Candles&#8221;

Dark stars are thought to be some of the earliest stars in the universe, forming in the genesis of it all. That would be nearly 13 billion years ago, or about 80 to 100 million years after the Big Bang, when clouds of hydrogen and helium gas began to cool. Astrophysicists suspect that dark matter might have fueled these early stars. And now, with the new James Webb Space Telescope, scientists are looking back through time to find out more about dark stars and the unseen dark matter that makes up about 95% of all matter in the universe.
What Is a Dark Star?
Scientists believe that dark stars might be the oldest stars in the history of the universe and may represent the first phase of stellar evolution. These stars are giant, much larger than our sun or any of the other stars around today. A single dark star could be as much as 400 to 200,000 times wider than our sun and 500 to 1,000 times more massive. (If we had one of these stars instead of our sun, it would reach past the orbit of Saturn.)
Dark stars are puffy and cool. And surprisingly, they aren't actually dark; they just don't emit any visible light. That's because instead of nuclear fusion, which is the process that converts hydrogen into helium in the core of an ordinary star, dark stars are powered differently. Astronomers believe that dark matter heating is what powers them.
Imagine the universe about 200 million years after the Big Bang. That extremely early universe was different from today's. It was a lot smaller and denser, with all the material of the cosmos crammed into a tinier volume. The earliest universe was also a lot darker because stars and galaxies had not formed yet. But there was dark matter (whatever that is) as well as hydrogen and helium gases plus trace amounts of lithium that had been created by the Big Bang.
The stars in the early universe are believed to be very large compared to the sun and in their short lives started to produce the heavier elements. It is possible that some of these early stars are the so-called dark stars. With a little luck, Webb might collect some data indicating that they do exist.
Still, no dark star has ever been observed. And even though they'd be massive — and potentially spewing gamma rays, neutrinos and antimatter — so far, they've been too faint to be detected because they don't emit visible light.
Researchers' Theories About Dark Stars
Scientists believe that dark stars probably reside at the centers of galaxies where the density of dark matter is highest. They've calculated that about 26% of what makes up our universe is dark matter, 69% is dark energy and only about 5% of the universe is visible. Scientists also believe that dark energy causes the expanding universe to accelerate.
But remember, since dark matter doesn't emit light, researchers have been trying to measure it indirectly via its gravitational fingerprints, such as the way it bends light around massive galaxies. Scientists predict that there may be white dwarf and neutron stars fueled by dark matter at the centers of galaxies. And while these stars should be observable, they've remained mysterious because they have yet to be found.
Astronomers have used gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO to find signatures of colliding black holes and neutron stars, so there's potential to also use these types of instruments to detect the gravitational signatures of two dark stars colliding. Someday, infrared detectors on ground-based telescopes might even be able to find white dwarfs and neutron stars fueled by dark matter near the center of the Milky Way.
Seeing Through the Dark
It is possible that the Hubble Space Telescope may have already seen a dark star. Some researchers have speculated that they might have found one located in the most distant galaxy ever observed. But it's been too hard to uniquely identify dark stars with Hubble, which means that astronomers can't be sure.
Now, scientists are hoping that the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope might be sensitive enough to finally find some dark stars. Since dark stars are relatively cool, they'd likely radiate at longer wavelengths in the infrared spectrum. And Webb, which is the largest, most complex and most powerful space telescope ever built, has instruments specifically created to capture that sort of infrared light. Webb's NIRCam and MIRI cameras could be sensitive enough to detect the infrared light that a supermassive dark star would emit. What this means is that if dark stars exist, then Webb should be able to see them.
In fact, Webb has already detected young stars in stellar nurseries that have never been seen before, as well as previously invisible areas of star birth inside nebulas.
What If Dark Matter Is Some Sort of New Particle?
For astrophysicists, dark matter is an enduring, frustrating and confusing mystery. Most theories of the universe don't make sense without it, and the evidence for dark matter is everywhere. We understand it via its gravitational influence: the bending of light around massive structures, the rotation curves of galaxies, the entire structure of the universe plus the cosmic microwave background. But dark matter doesn't interact with light or with ordinary matter. So, does it do anything? Does it simply sit there gravitating?
For now, it's beyond the edge of our scientific knowledge.
But Webb, launched on Dec. 25, 2021, gives us hope. Webb's infrared cameras are sensitive enough to view objects that have been too distant or too faint for other telescopes, even the first galaxies. The telescope has been specifically designed to study the early universe and the formation of the first stars, which could alter our understanding of the entire universe.
Remember that scientists still don't know what the universe's first stars looked like and when exactly they formed. These are some of the questions Webb was designed to help answer. The next few years will surely be an exciting time for astronomers as Webb begins to uncover secrets of the distant universe and help scientists observe how the universe evolved.
And maybe, when the next generation asks, "What is a dark star?" — we'll have the full answer, with images to boot. But more likely, we'll just have more questions.
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The Mystery of Dark Stars

The planet Neptune is far, far away — more than 2.7 billion miles from Earth to be exact. It’s the outermost planet of our solar system, orbiting in one of the dimmest and most remote areas. As such, images of Neptune are difficult to come by, but thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb), we’ve been able to take a closer look at the planet.
What Does Neptune Look Like?
Webb is currently helping us get a better view of Neptune. Typically, Webb looks into deep space to search for dark stars and supernovas. In September 2021, astronomers pointed Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) at Neptune, where it captured the clearest view of the planet’s rings since 1989 when Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe the distant planet. Webb’s cameras also clearly showed Neptune’s fainter dust bands for the first time.
The planet Neptune is characterized as an ice giant due to the chemical makeup of its interior. Compared with gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, which are predominantly hydrogen and helium, Neptune is richer in heavier elements and molecules, such as water, ammonia and methane. The icy planet’s atmosphere is made of hydrogen, helium and methane. It’s this methane gas that gives the ice giant its signature blue color in images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope’s visible wavelengths cameras.
However, Webb’s NIRCam uses the near-infrared range of the electromagentic spectrum. As a result, Neptune does not appear blue in these images. In fact, Neptune’s methane gas strongly absorbs red and infrared light, so the planet looks dark at these wavelengths, except where high-altitude clouds are present. Neptune’s methane-ice clouds, which appear as bright streaks and spots reflecting sunlight, are the most prominent aspect of Webb’s images of the planet.
Because Webb creates such stable and precise images, it’s also been able to detect crisp, clear views of several of Neptune’s bright, narrow rings. Some of these rings have never been seen at all, let alone with this amount of clarity. In addition to the new, clear views of Neptune’s rings, Webb has also detected the planet’s fainter dust bands. These dust bands show up as fuzzy particles in between the brighter, ice-dominated rings.
There’s Still Much More to Learn
While looking closely to answer the question, “What does Neptune look like?” astronomers found a thin line of brightness that circles the ice giant’s equator. Neptune has the highest measured wind speeds in the entire solar system, with average wind speeds of 700 miles per hour near the equator. Astronomers believe these glowing bands could be clouds and storms in Neptune’s atmosphere — in other words, visual evidence of the planet’s powerful winds, churning storms and turbulent weather.
The storm clouds are most likely produced when warmer gas flows toward Neptune’s midlatitudes as part of the planet’s global atmospheric circulation. When the gases in Neptune’s atmosphere descend and warm at the equator, they glow at infrared wavelengths more than the surrounding, cooler gases, which means they show up on Webb’s cameras as bright bands.
Images of Neptune, including its rings, dust bands, high-altitude clouds and weather, aren’t all that’s been captured. Webb also caught images of seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa and Triton. Triton is Neptune’s largest moon. It’s covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen and reflects most of the sunlight that hits it, which means it looks like a bright point of light in some images. Triton orbits Neptune in a backward orbit, leading astronomers to speculate that this moon was originally a Kuiper belt object that was gravitationally captured by Neptune. Additional Webb studies of both Triton and Neptune are planned in 2023.
Neptune is tilted at a 28-degree angle along its axis, so it experiences four seasons, just like Earth. But one Neptunian year, or the time it takes for Neptune to orbit the sun, is equivalent to 164 Earth years, so each season on Neptune lasts 40 years. Astronomers plan to use Webb to continue studying Neptune, and by comparing these recent images with future ones, they hope to learn more about Neptune’s seasonal effects and dynamic atmosphere.
Astronomers also plan to use Webb to conduct more planetary research within our solar system and beyond for as long as possible, so stay tuned. There’s always more to learn!
 
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What We’ve Learned From Webb’s New Images of Neptune

The earth beneath our feet consists of a rocky crust, a semi-solid mantle and an iron core that's believed to be as hot as the surface of the sun. The outer core is liquid, but the immense pressure at the center of Earth causes the inner core to be compressed into a solid ball of metal. Earth's inner core spins, rotating in the same direction as the surface. However, the inner core can rotate independently of the surface because it is suspended in the liquid outer core.
Until recently, the inner core was believed to be spinning slightly faster than the surface of the earth. However, a study published in Nature Geoscience found evidence that the inner core has recently slowed its rotation — matching the spin of Earth's surface — and may soon be rotating even more slowly. Is this a sign of the end of days? Not quite.
 
 
 
The study found evidence that Earth's inner core has slowed down before, back in the 1960s, and then sped up again. Researchers believe the inner core's rotational speed oscillates a bit like a pendulum, slowing down and speeding up over a 70-year cycle. Thus, the speed of the inner core matches the spin of Earth's surface every 35 years or so, with the next occurrence expected to take place in the mid-2040s.
 
 
 
However, this interpretation of the data is controversial, largely because so little is known about the center of Earth. Let's dig into what we do know.
 
 
 
Studying Earth's Inner Core
 
 
 
The inner core sits about 3,200 miles (~5,100 kilometers) below Earth's surface and is roughly the size of the dwarf planet Pluto. The inner core composition is mostly iron with some nickel, and the temperature is about 9,392 °F (5,200 °C), according to Space.com.
 
 
 
Given these facts about the inner core, studying it takes some ingenuity and patience since it cannot be directly observed. The most useful information has come from earthquakes and even nuclear explosions, which send seismic waves in all directions through the earth, including through the center of it.
This seismic activity is constantly monitored by seismometers located around the world. Some types of seismic waves can travel through solids but not liquids, and seismic waves travel at different speeds depending on the density and temperature of the rock. Therefore, they are used like an X-ray to learn about the inner core composition.
Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann used this technique to discover the very existence of Earth's inner core, publishing her work in 1936.
 
 
 
Rotation of the Inner Core
 
 
 
In 1996, two researchers at Columbia University in New York found that the time it took for seismic waves to travel through Earth's center had changed over the course of three decades, as reported in Nature. To explain this result, they proposed that the inner core was spinning slightly faster than Earth's surface. Therefore, seismic waves that had originated from the same location — but years apart — were traveling through slightly different sections of the inner core.
 
 
 
One of these researchers used the same technique to examine seismic data from the 1990s and 2000s, again finding that the time it took for the seismic waves to travel through the inner core changed over time. When they looked at similar seismic data from 2009 to 2021, they were surprised to find very little change in the timing of seismic waves, suggesting that the inner core was rotating at the same speed as the surface of Earth.
 
 
 
By looking at earlier records of seismic activity, they found the same pattern of very little difference in the 1960s and 1970s. This led them to conclude that the rotation of the inner core regularly speeds up and slows down over the course of about 70 years, matching the speed of Earth roughly every 35 years.
 
 
 
These findings were published on January 23, 2023, and immediately misinterpreted by many in the popular press. Headlines declared that Earth's inner core had stopped spinning and would soon be reversing direction. The authors issued a correction on January 31 to clarify that Earth's core was still spinning in the same direction but more slowly.
 
 
 
Effects on Surface Dwellers
 
 
 
Slight changes in the rotation of the inner core have almost no effect on daily life. The researchers did report that their proposed 70-year oscillation coincides with minute changes to the length of days and Earth's magnetic field.
 
 
 
The length of a day is known to increase by milliseconds over centuries because of friction caused by the moon's tidal forces. When these predictable fluctuations are removed, there are still minuscule changes to the length of days that appear to track with the predicted 70-year oscillations in the inner core's rotation.
 
 
 
These oscillations might also affect and be affected by the electromagnetic forces produced by the molten outer core. The heat energy released by the inner core is believed to cause the outer iron core to move. This movement generates electrical currents that produce a magnetic field that surrounds the planet. This magnetic field protects living things from damaging cosmic radiation and is essential for life as we know it. One hypothesis is that the electromagnetic forces produced by the outer core also influence the spin of the inner core.
 
 
 
There's Still Much to Learn
 
 
 
Not enough is known about the center of Earth to draw any solid conclusions. Just a year earlier, a publication in Science Advances proposed a 6-year oscillation for the core's rate of rotation. Others argue that changes to the surface of the inner core over time are a more plausible explanation for the seismic data.
As one of the scientists who proposed the 6-year oscillation told the New York Times, ""No matter which model you like, there's some data that disagrees with it."" But even so, the pieces will eventually come together into one clear picture as research continues, and one day, we may fully understand everything about Earth and its inner workings.
 
 
 
 
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Earth&#8217;s Inner Core Has Slowed Its Spin — Should We Be Worried?

Our closest neighbor in space, the Moon, is slowly drifting away from us. Researchers have calculated that the Moon's recession runs at around 1.5 inches (almost 4 centimeters) per year. Even though it's slow, this drift does impact life on our planet.
Over the centuries, we've built up an impressive array of knowledge about our satellite, but how many of us have wondered what would happen if the moon drifted away from Earth? Though it's unlikely to affect us in our lifetime, there are some major changes to expect with the Moon's departure.
Lunar Recession History
The Moon was born out of a massive collision of rocky material hurtling into our planet. The Atlantic describes that, when molten debris spun and formed into our satellite, the Moon's orbit was about 10 times closer, and a day on Earth ran at around four hours. It was also pulling away much faster — at around 8 inches (around 20 centimeters) per year.
From the time it formed to the present day, the Moon has been moving away from Earth. Astronomers suspected this but were able to confirm and measure the rate by bouncing lasers off mirrors installed on the Moon's surface during the lunar expeditions of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Conversation notes that the current rate is around 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year. From this rate, scientists initially calculated back to an initial impact date of around 1.5 billion years ago; however, other evidence showed that the Moon is much older with a creation date of around 4.5 billion years ago.
Rather than give in to "alternative" creation theories, the researchers turned to sedimentary rock analysis, which suggested variation in recession rates over the years. For example, around 2.46 billion years ago, the distance between Earth and Moon was 60,000 kilometers less than it is today, which shortened the day to only 17 hours instead of 24 hours.
Why Is the Distance Between the Earth and Moon Increasing?
Before asking what would happen if the moon drifted away from Earth, we first need to understand why this drift is happening. All bodies in space exert a force on each other, and the magnitude depends on a number of factors, including distance and size or mass. Closer objects exert more gravitational pull, and that increases if they are larger. Earth exerts a gravitational pull on the Moon, and vice versa.
The force that the Moon exerts on Earth shows up as our tides, with the oceans ebbing and flowing roughly twice each day. The gravitational pull of the Moon makes our oceans bulge outward along the direction of the pull; however, NASA notes that this pull is out of sync, since it takes some time to move water around. The tidal movements also slow Earth's rotational spin due to friction. This, in turn, impacts the speed at which the Moon orbits, letting it drift off into space.
What Are the Implications of This Drifting?
So, what would happen if the distance between the Earth and Moon increased? Most of this question can be answered by looking at what influence the Moon exerts on Earth, and as the Royal Museums Greenwich describes, it's mostly to do with the sea, as this is where lunar gravity has the most effect.
Interestingly, if the Moon was closer, its gravity would start tugging at Earth's crust. At even half the distance, Live Science describes that, not only would tides be eight times higher and slow down Earth's spin, but there'd also be more seismic activity and volcanic eruptions.
Increasing distance would also cause extinctions and climate upheaval. A more distant Moon would mean smaller tides, which would affect coastal ecosystems and ocean currents. Loss of coastal ecosystems and habitats for many species would seriously affect animals on land and sea that rely on them as part of the food chain.
Ocean currents drive and stabilize the weather, so we could expect more extremes of temperature and global climate disruption. The Moon's gravitational pull also helps stabilize Earth's tilt toward and away from the Sun, which causes the different seasons in each hemisphere. Less stability might completely abolish the seasons or perhaps lead to more extremes.
Being further away would mean less impact on Earth's rotation, with longer days and nights. There would also be less moonlight, as the Moon would seem smaller in the night sky. Predators that hunt at night wouldn't be able to locate prey so easily.
And with a "smaller" Moon in the sky, we'd lose an astronomical highlight — in 600 million years, the Moon will be too far away to completely block the Sun in a total eclipse.
Sweet Dreams, Moon
Another reason for the Moon's drift is tidal locking. On Earth, we only see one side of the Moon, but this wasn't always the case. Early on in its development, the Moon had its own rotational spin. However, since Earth was also exerting a gravitational pull and distorting its shape, energy dissipated and slowed the Moon's rotation down. Eventually, one lunar rotation took the same length of time to orbit the Earth, and the Moon became tidally locked with only one face presented to the planet. This energy dissipation also contributes to lunar drift.
As the two drift further apart, Earth will become tidally locked and have its own dark side compared to the Moon. In about 50 billion years, not only will the Moon be further away, but only one half of our planet will be able to see it each night. While that's quite a bit away, it's just one more reason to appreciate the Moon in the night sky while we can still see it.
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What Would Happen If the Moon Drifted Away From Earth?

Astronomers will soon use the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) to look farther into space than even the Hubble Space Telescope has been able to. They've already gathered an incredible amount of data and breathtaking images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Despite these gains, so much about space is still unknown. One of the fundamental facts that still hasn't been answered is what the most distant galaxies in the universe are like. The Webb telescope will extend Hubble's capabilities and help astronomers catch a glimpse of the most distant galaxies in the universe. Historical Misunderstandings Throughout history, philosophers and scientists have grappled with deep questions about humanity's relationship to space. Back in Aristotle's day, people thought Earth was the center of everything, and that everything else revolved around it. This misconception was eventually dispelled by Copernicus and Galileo (and many others in between), when Galileo pointed a telescope at the stars and used evidence to prove that the universe doesn't revolve around Earth. Centuries later, astronomers debated the size of the Milky Way. The BBC reports that in a 1920 debate between astronomers, estimates ranged from 30,000 to 300,000 light-years in diameter. It turns out that those estimates were either three times too small or three times too big. Today, astronomers measure the Milky Way to be 100,000-150,000 light-years across. In the 1920s American astronomer Edwin Hubble was the first astronomer to determine that other galaxies existed beyond the Milky Way. Until then, most astronomers thought the fuzzy patches they saw through their telescopes were nebulous gas clouds within the Milky Way. Hubble's discovery expanded our modern understanding of space. During this time period, scientists also believed that space was static, according to NBC News. And yet when Albert Einstein developed his theory of relativity, it predicted a universe that must either expand or contract. To fix the disagreement, Einstein hedged his theory with a "cosmological constant" to produce a static universe. Then, astronomers like Vesto Slipher and Edwin Hubble measured the motions of galaxies for the first time and found that most appeared to be speeding away from us. In other words, the universe is expanding. Measuring the Observable Universe The universe is larger than we can possibly comprehend, and it is still expanding. Now, a century after Hubble's discovery, his namesake telescope continues to reveal galaxies that are billions of light-years away. Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we now know that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies, according to Space.com. When the Webb Telescope launches, it will reveal even more information about the farthest galaxies. When we talk about the distance of anything in space, we're also talking about time. Looking at the night sky is like time traveling. The shiny things that we perceive as stars are actually like snapshots of what those stars looked like in the past, according to LiveScience. Stars and other objects in space are so far away that their light can take thousands or even millions of years to reach Earth. The farthest objects are so far away from us that their light still hasn't reached Earth. What Is a Light-Year?      Enable targeting cookies to view this content. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. According to NASA, one light-year is equal to 6 trillion miles, or 9 trillion kilometers. Astronomer Dr. Katie Mack explains that everything you look at is in the past. The farther away in space, the longer that light has been traveling. Even if you hold up your hand in front of your face, you're actually seeing your hand as it was a nanosecond ago, because that's how long it takes light to travel the distance between your hand and your eyes. It takes approximately eight minutes for light to travel from our sun to us, and several years for light to travel from our next-door neighbor Alpha Centauri. Astronomers can use the world's most powerful telescopes to see galaxies that are more than 13 billion light-years away. Scientists know that the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old, according to LiveScience. So, is it 13.8 billion light-years wide? No; it's more complicated than that. That pesky expansion that Hubble observed means that while the farthest light traveled to us, outer space continued to expand. When accounting for the expansion, scientists estimate that the edge of the observable universe is now 46.5 billion light-years away. But what about the galaxies that we can't see? LiveScience reports that astronomers have used models to estimate that the universe could be at least 250 times the size of the 46.5 billion light-years we can actually see. Webb Will See Farther The edge of space — if there is such a thing — will always be beyond our grasp. As Hubble noted, space is expanding. As a result, the farthest galaxies are moving away from us faster than the speed of light, so we can't "see" them, no matter how awesome modern telescopes may be. The Webb telescope will peer into our universe's history by observing the most distant stars and galaxies. The telescope is 100 times more powerful than Hubble. While its predecessor orbits Earth at an altitude of approximately 570 kilometers, Webb will sit deeper in space, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. From that vantage point, the largest telescope ever launched into space will observe infrared light. It will use a suite of scientific instruments to capture faint objects that could be more than 13 billion light-years away, including young galaxies that were born just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang occurred.                   

NASA's Webb Telescope Will Look Farther into Space

If you were an astronaut living on the International Space Station (ISS) or traveling far into space for months or years, you'd need fresh food. You'd need to grow crops. You'd need agriculture in space.
But can plants grow in space? How difficult is it to create a sustainable food source up there? Let's explore how far space-based farming has come and what the future of food in space might look like.
Space-Based Farming Is Complicated
One of the biggest challenges of agriculture in space is finding water and nutrients on other planets or transporting them in a spacecraft or space station. On a planet like Mars, for example, locating water or nutrients so plants can grow in space might be near impossible, and hauling a shipment of water or nutrients to the ISS is expensive. Launching a single pound of cargo into space costs about $10,000, and 1 gallon of water is about 8.33 pounds — so it'd be a pretty hefty price to send enough H2O for crops into space.
The astronauts who live on the ISS receive regular shipments of food that sometimes include fresh fruits and vegetables, but they usually have to add water to dehydrated food. For a multi-year journey to another planet, there wouldn't be any resupply shipments. Over time, prepackaged freeze-dried meals would get old and seem less tasty, and the vitamins in them would likely break down.
This poses major problems for astronaut health, which explains why it's mandatory to figure out not only how can plants grow in space but also how to send autonomous food-growing systems to places like Mars so they'll be there and ready to go when people arrive.
Another big challenge that humans growing crops off-world must face is finding a decent place to farm the plants. Rocky places, like the moon and Mars, don't have soil. The ground there is regolith — loose, gravelly material that doesn't have organic materials in it like the soil on Earth does.
Engineers Have Found Creative Ways to Farm in Space
Nevertheless, NASA has been growing plants in space without soil or water since 1997. On the Mir space station, astronauts raised adzuki beans, a high-protein food crop. They started the beans from both cuttings and seeds and suspended them in midair in a growing chamber. Astronauts aboard the space shuttle and the ISS performed experiments using the principles of aeroponics to find a solution: Can plants grow in space using an air and mist environment?
They discovered that they could successfully grow food without any soil and with only small amounts of water. In the aeroponic systems, the roots of the plants developed in an enclosed environment and were misted with a nutrient-rich spray. Using the aeroponic systems reduced water use by 98%, fertilizer use by 60% and pesticide use by 100%.
Another benefit of these crops is that they can be planted and harvested year-round without interruption. Aeroponically grown plants also take up more minerals and vitamins than regular soil-based plants, which means they're healthier and potentially more nutritious. And remember: Nutrition is crucial for crews who need to grow their own food during long-term missions in deep space.
Getting Hungry?
At this point, you're probably wondering what types of plants could be grown off-world. In the 1950s and 1960s, early research into space agriculture focused mostly on algae, which admittedly doesn't sound very tasty. But by the 1980s, crop lists included wheat, soybeans, potatoes, rice, sweet potatoes, lettuce and peanuts.
More recently, engineers have focused their efforts on designing a ""salad machine"" system that could provide fresh food to astronauts on space stations and even on long-duration transits to Mars.
Introducing the Space Salad
Astronauts have had considerable success with growing and eating vegetables on the ISS, starting with red romaine lettuce. The current garden on the space station is called Veggie, short for Vegetable Production System. It's a simple, low-power system that grows fresh and nutritious pick-and-eat salad crops.
Veggie is about the size of a carry-on suitcase and can hold six plants. Each plant grows in a ""pillow"" filled with a clay-based growth media and fertilizer that helps distribute water, nutrients and air in a healthy balance around the roots. Without the pillows, the roots would either drown in water or be engulfed by air because of the way fluids in space tend to form bubbles.
Astronauts have been using Veggie to grow three types of lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mizuna mustard, red Russian kale and zinnia flowers. The Veggie team also developed a produce-sanitizing citric acid-based wipe to clean the leafy greens since there isn't a way to cook them in space yet. Astronauts aren't able to sprinkle salt and pepper on their veggies because it would float away and could clog air vents or contaminate equipment, so they use liquid seasoning on their food instead.
Since green plants reflect green light and absorb red and blue wavelengths, light emitting diodes (LEDs) above the plants glow magenta and produce the spectrum of light most suited to the plants' growth. Crew members tend to the plants by opening wicks to help seedlings emerge, providing water, thinning the seedlings and monitoring health and progress, which includes taking photos to send to the ground team. Half of the crop is frozen and returned to Earth for analysis, and the other half is weighed and eaten by the crew.
Peas and Quiet
Crew members on the ISS also assess how much they enjoy interacting with the Veggie system and how it affects their mood. It turns out that eating the same food over and over gets boring. So boring, in fact, that NASA has been studying food acceptability and menu fatigue, which looks at whether or not crew members like a food enough to actually eat it. Food acceptability affects caloric intake and nutrition.
Researchers discovered, however, that taking care of plants in space enhanced the astronauts' happiness and well-being. This finding correlates with a number of scientific studies on the effects of gardening, sometimes called horticultural therapy. The studies have linked gardening with a wide range of health outcomes, including reductions in depression, anxiety and body mass index as well as increases in life satisfaction, quality of life and sense of community. Results of another study showed that gardening increased life satisfaction, vigor, psychological well-being and cognitive function. Apparently, gardening is fun and relaxing no matter where you do it.
Astronauts also found that growing fresh flowers in space created a beautiful atmosphere and allowed them to enjoy a piece of home. Flowers were especially popular with astronaut Scott Kelly, who photographed a bouquet floating in the cupola against the backdrop of Earth.
The Future of Agriculture in Space
If we want to expand our ability to explore places farther from Earth than the ISS, then figuring out space agriculture is necessary. Travelers who venture far into space could be gone for months or years without resupply shipments, and multivitamins alone will not be enough to keep astronauts healthy as they explore deep space. NASA engineers have been partnering with leading agri-biology companies to understand more about the types of plants that can be grown off-world.
One new concept developed by the teams at NASA is the next-generation inflatable growing chamber called the Flex Aeroponic System. It's lightweight and flexible and can be packed up and stored during transportation. Once the garden is opened up on another planet, seeds can be placed on specially designed mesh holders inside the chamber.
Researchers found that plants exposed to the effects of microgravity could produce greater yields than in field settings here on Earth — as much as 1,000 bunches of lettuce, herbs and vegetables in less than 25 days. This type of high-performance rapid crop production of pesticide-free herbs, grains, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and other vegetables has great potential for integration into future moon and Mars missions.
This could ultimately lead to new strategies for growing and maintaining healthy food plants on long-term space flights and for future bases on other planets and moons. Space agriculture even has the potential for helping us learn more about how to best grow food here on Earth.

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Agriculture in Space: Growing Plants on Spacecraft

Make some room, human on the Moon.
If all goes according to plan, NASA astronauts will, in the not-so-distant future, live and work on a base on the Moon as part of the agency's Artemis program. After some brief stays on the lunar surface as part of initial missions that should start this decade, the next generation of explorers will eventually establish a long-term home on the Moon to conduct scientific research and create a stepping-stone to Mars.
To do so, they will need lunar architecture that can accommodate their work and personal needs while protecting them from Moon dust, extreme temperatures and the sun's radiation. Fortunately, engineers on Earth are designing it. The first crews on the moon will stay in a landing platform that's also a shuttle to a moon-orbiting space station, and a permanent base probably won't be constructed until years later. Still, that's just a blink of an eye when considering no one has walked on the Moon since Gene Cernan lifted his foot from the surface 50 years ago on the last Apollo mission.
"The Apollo era was filled with new technology," says Krystal Puga, an engineer and mission architect for Northrop Grumman's advanced concepts group. "This time, humans will stay longer and do much more. Artemis will push this next generation to innovate even further."
Artemis Will Further the Gains of Apollo
This push to further explore and settle on the Moon formally took shape in 2017 when the Artemis program began. (In Greek mythology, Artemis is the twin of Apollo and a goddess of the moon.) Artemis centers on several large-scale components that will support various stages that will stretch into the 2030s and beyond.
Launching from Earth on top of NASA's Space Launch System rocket, the Orion capsule will push Artemis crews farther than any astronauts have traveled in space. In 2022, the first mission, Artemis I, completed an uncrewed 1.4-million-mile test lap around the Moon and splashed down back on Earth. That set the stage for Artemis II, a crewed flight in 2024 that will take four astronauts around and beyond the moon to test the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems and other capabilities.
Orion won't directly land on the Moon. It will dock with NASA's lunar Gateway and its Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, humanity's first space station in lunar orbit to support NASA's deep space exploration plans. HALO will support operations around the moon and serve as a living space for astronauts on their way to and from the lunar surface.
The astronauts will reach the moon on the Human Landing System (HLS), a platform that will also carry rovers, scientific equipment and other payloads. The initial crews will live and sleep on HLS, getting out for scientific projects and other work, but eventually, NASA intends to build Artemis Base Camp. That's where Puga and her colleagues come in.
Designing a Human-Centered Structure
The work of Puga and her teammates is in the early design-and-test phase as they study different habitat concepts that could ultimately lead to the creation of objects large and small that would go into a lunar structure. "The exciting thing about working on cutting-edge technology is knowing that many of these details need to be figured out for the first time," Puga says.
That means understanding the functions and requirements of a home that would double as a workspace for as many as four astronauts at a time. To do this, her group and other teams conduct mock-ups that involve humans so bugs can be worked out early to see if any ideas can advance to further stages. Engineers call these approaches human-in-the-loop testing and human-centered design.
"We focus on human factors and crew system interfaces to make sure displays, handles, workloads and the mobility and comfort of astronauts are all being considered," Puga says. "We think about sleeping conditions, hygiene, food preparation and all that goes into living and working in the habitat. We basically do a day in the life of an astronaut and build from that perspective to ensure architecture is where it is needed."
Building a Shelter to Protect Against Extreme Weather
When the time comes to establish a base on the moon, it shouldn't require assembly, Puga explains. Just as the James Webb Space Telescope automatically unfolded in space, the placement of lunar architecture should be touchless.
"It's very difficult to assemble something like that in spacesuits," she says. "Running a torque wrench would be hard and time consuming and we want the astronauts to focus on science."
Structures on the moon would be made with NASA-approved materials — e.g., space-grade steel and aluminum — that stood the test of space's harsh environment during Apollo and other missions. Those conditions are top of mind for the advanced concept group.
Artemis Base Camp will need to offer shelter from extreme temperature swings (250 degrees Fahrenheit near the equator in the daytime; -208 degrees at night, when the moon's poles are even colder). Astronauts will also need protection from the sun's radiation. Gravity and long stretches of darkness are major considerations, as is lunar dust.
"Lunar dust sticks to everything," Puga says. "We're accounting for that and thinking about creating something like a mudroom inside the habitat. But it's not as simple as taking shoes off. You have to contain all that dust in one space so it doesn't gather in the galley or sleeping area, or other critical areas."
The technology that goes into the astronauts' home away from home can't be too far ahead or behind the curve; otherwise, it runs the risk of not being compatible with what arrives on later missions. Systems need to plug and play. Scientific payloads will change depending on missions, but the plugs will remain the same, Puga says. If an electronic device breaks down or if it makes sense to upgrade technology, things will be replaced. And software that controls interior power, lights and temperature should be updated just as it is on a spacecraft.
Making Lunar Dreams Come True
Puga hasn't been to the moon, but she got a taste of extreme temperatures, confined spaces, isolation and the blending of work and life in a lunar home when she spent three weeks at an arctic research site in Juneau, Alaska. It was a reminder that her career has been a dream come true and how her work will help the dreams of many others become reality.
"There are a lot of technical challenges to this," Puga notes. "Power and communications systems, unpressurized and pressurized rovers, and landing systems are just some of the technologies being developed to support the Artemis mission. But I'm very excited to work on the solutions that can get us there."
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Building a Base on the Moon, One Design at a Time

It's one thing to get carsick. It's a whole other thing to get sick in space.
While carsickness eventually subsides, some astronauts have faced poor health long after they've completed a mission. It's an unfortunate conclusion to an undoubtedly exhilarating experience — but scientists are furthering their understanding of how weak gravity can affect the immune system in space with the aim of keeping astronauts healthy. They're also trying to protect astronauts from space radiation.
Their findings will be critical as NASA launches its grand plan to create a base on the moon and explore Mars, testing astronauts' physical endurance as they spend more time in space than ever before.
Biology Goes Up Against the Harshness of Space
What happens if you get sick in space? Astronauts can, indeed, get sick in space, and because they're traveling in a sealed environment, illness could rapidly spread and jeopardize a mission. With this concern in mind, NASA typically quarantines astronauts for a week before a launch, and as seen on the International Space Station (ISS), at least two crew members are medically trained, according to WIRED.
But NASA is particularly focused on long-term health conditions that astronauts contend with once they return home. Astronauts have experienced rashes, heart arrhythmia, ear conditions, dehydration, low blood pressure and loss of bone calcium.
NASA's Human Research Program studies the risks to the human body in space. For instance, as NASA enters the beginning stages of its Artemis program, it's working to improve how it shields and monitors radiation that's more intense and varied than on Earth.
Then, there's gravity. It causes bones to lose as much as 1.5% of mineral density each month in space, and it affects the flow of bodily fluids, which can lead to eye and kidney problems. To that end, during and after a mission, NASA tests an astronaut's balance and fine motor skills and monitors the distribution of fluids in the body.
To get an even truer sense of how gravity affects astronauts, NASA conducted a landmark experiment on two of them: identical twins Scott and Mark Kelly. Mark stayed on Earth while Scott spent nearly a year on ISS. As soon as Scott reached space, more than 1,000 of his genes changed, signaling the activation of DNA repair and immune system regulation, as Space.com reported. His immune system, a study co-author said, was basically on "high alert."
Learning How Immunity Works in Space
Two recent studies furthered the "Twins Study" by looking more closely at what happens to the immune system in space. In 2021, Stanford University and University of California, San Francisco, researchers found that the weakening of an astronaut's immune system during space flight seems to be partly caused by the abnormal activation of immune cells called T regulator cells (Tregs).
In the gravity of Earth, Tregs are typically triggered to slow immune responses when infection no longer threatens the body. But in microgravity conditions, changes in Tregs make them go to work before the immune system is challenged. When the researchers stimulated an immune response in human immune cells from blood samples in microgravity, they found that Tregs helped suppress the immune response that was triggered.
A University of Ottawa study also connected gravity to changes in the immune system, but instead of simulating microgravity, these researchers examined blood samples of ISS astronauts taken before, during and after their missions. They found that space slows the activity of genes in leukocytes — white blood cells that are crucial to the immune system.
An astronaut's blood shifts from their legs to their torsos and heads once in space, forcing the body to reduce fluid by as much as 15%. This causes immune cells to cram into a smaller amount of blood. The researchers believe gene activity eliminates the extra cells, which changes how the immune system responds to pathogens. "It's as if the body is telling (the cells), 'Don't defend, put your guards down,'" the lead researcher told NPR.
Science Needs to Protect Astronauts
Determining how astronauts can be protected from radiation will also be key to lengthy space missions.
The University of British Columbia, for example, will study yeast samples that flew onboard Artemis I on its unmanned flight around the moon. The researchers will look at genetic changes in the yeast cells to determine the influence of radiation and possibly use the information to develop drugs or treatments that can help astronauts tolerate radiation shocks and reduce adverse health effects, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
For years just a dream, deep space exploration is finally set to happen. But for those dreams to be fully realized, future studies will need to continue to examine what happens to the immune system in space and why to help protect the health of astronauts on their historic journeys.
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