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The top space stories of the week!

Largest-known gas cloud in space is surrounding Stephan's Quintet, NASA is confident that Artemis I will launch Nov. 14 and a rocket part safely crashes into the Pacific Ocean. These are some of this week's top stories. 

Chinese rocket debris weighing 23 tons harmlessly crashed into the Pacific Ocean

The Long March 5B rocket that China launched on Monday (Oct. 31) does not have a design where its core stage can safely deorbit. This allowed for a situation like what occurred this week, when a 23-ton piece of debris from this rocket part fell in an uncontrolled descent. Fortunately, the piece of debris landed harmlessly in the Pacific Ocean on Friday (Nov. 4). China launched the rocket to deliver the third and final module to China's Tiangong Space Station. 

Full story: Whew! 23-ton Chinese rocket debris falls to Earth over Pacific Ocean

See also: China's latest giant rocket debris crash blasted by US and European space chiefs

Plus: Another huge piece of Chinese space junk is falling to Earth. 'Here we go again,' experts say

Artemis I emerges from rocket garage and awaits Nov. 14 launch

NASA recently provided an update to its Artemis I mission. It is confident that Artemis I will remain on schedule for its next launch attempt on Nov. 14, officials said on Thursday (Nov. 3). The moon rocket, which will fly as an uncrewed demonstration flight, has rolled out to its launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after staying inside its Vehicle Assembly Building for more than a month. 

Full story: Artemis 1 moon rocket 'ready to go' for Nov. 14 launch, NASA says

See also: NASA's tiny CAPSTONE moon probe overcomes glitch, sets sights on lunar orbit

Plus: NASA plans its second human moon landing on Artemis 4 after all: report

Total lunar eclipse next week

People in Oceania, the Americas, Asia, and Northern Europe will see a total lunar eclipse next Tuesday (Nov. 8). The total eclipse period will last about an hour and a half, when the moon dips completely into Earth's shadow in space. 

Full story: Don't miss the Beaver Blood Moon lunar eclipse on Nov. 8

The 2022 Taurid meteor shower arrives next week

The Taurid meteor shower will be more difficult to see this year, due to a full or nearly full moon bathing the night sky with its light. But if skygazers keep their eyes peeled next week, they might get a glimpse of a "shooting star" from the debris of comet Encke. 

Full story: Don't miss the brilliant Taurid meteor shower next week

Meet the closest known black hole to Earth

A recent study reports that a black hole lurks relatively near to Earth at just 1,560 light-years away. The newfound object, called Gaia Bh2, is about 10 times more massive than the sun. It's now the closest-known black hole to our planet.

Full story: Record breaker! Newfound black hole is closest known to Earth

A "planet killer" appears within twilight asteroid survey

Astronomers recently found a 0.9-mile-wide (1.5 kilometers) asteroid after they peered into the sky close to the horizon at dusk and dawn. Their goal was to find near-Earth asteroids that fly closer to the sun than our planet, which hide in the star's glare. Space rocks of this size near Earth get the name "planet killer."

Full story: 'Planet killer' asteroid found hiding in sun's glare may one day hit Earth

Earth received an interstellar visitor years before astronomers found 'Oumuamua 

In January 2014, a 3-foot-wide (0.9 meters) mini-asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere at 134,200 mph (216,000 km/h). The rock that crashed onto our planet actually came from outside the Solar System, making it the first known interstellar visitor. This means it predates the sighting of the well-known interstellar rock 'Oumuamua by three years. 

Full story: Confirmed! A 2014 meteor is Earth's 1st known interstellar visitor

Tonga volcanic eruption might have warmed Earth's climate

The volcano that ripped apart the Polynesian island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai sprayed enough water into the stratosphere to warm the climate. Scientists made this finding after they analyzed satellite data from the January 2022 event. The eruption generated the highest volcanic cloud since the Krakatoa eruption of 1883. 

Full story: Record-breaking Hunga Tonga volcanic plume might have warmed Earth's climate

See also: Europe warming twice as fast as rest of the world, new report reveals

Plus: Satellites help scientists see how coral reefs are dealing with climate change

Largest-known gas cloud in space surrounds Stephan's Quintet

Chinese astronomers recently discovered that Stephan's Quintet, whose appearance dazzled the public in one of the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope this summer, is shrouded in the largest-known cloud of atomic gas. All galaxies started out as masses of atomic gas that clumped together, and so, this finding in Stephan's Quintet makes it a good place to look for clues to better understand how galaxies evolve. 

Full story: Scientists discover largest gas cloud in space that's 20 times bigger than the Milky Way

SpaceX Falcon Heavy launches for the first time in three years

On Tuesday (Nov. 1), SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the first Falcon Heavy launch since June 2019, and the fourth overall. It lofted U.S. military satellites into geostationary orbit as part of a U.S. Space Force mission called USSF-44. 

Full story: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, world's most powerful rocket, launches US military satellites in 1st flight in 3 years

See also: SpaceX now targeting December for 1st Starship orbital launch: report

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Doris is a science journalist and Space.com contributor. She received a B.A. in Sociology and Communications at Fordham University in New York City. Her first work was published in collaboration with London Mining Network, where her love of science writing was born. Her passion for astronomy started as a kid when she helped her sister build a model solar system in the Bronx. She got her first shot at astronomy writing as a Space.com editorial intern and continues to write about all things cosmic for the website. Doris has also written about microscopic plant life for Scientific American’s website and about whale calls for their print magazine. She has also written about ancient humans for Inverse, with stories ranging from how to recreate Pompeii’s cuisine to how to map the Polynesian expansion through genomics. She currently shares her home with two rabbits. Follow her on twitter at @salazar_elin.

Top 10 space stories of 2020

FROM THE February 2021 ISSUE

An international fleet of spacecraft set off for Mars, Crew Dragon carried astronauts to the ISS, and a global pandemic left its mark on astronomy.

By Alison Klesman, Jake Parks  |  Published: Tuesday, February 16, 2021

RELATED TOPICS: MARS | ASTRONOMY | MILKY WAY

Three Mars missions from three different countries took advantage of an alignment between Earth and the Red Planet in 2020. The missions will teach us more about Mars’ atmosphere, seek out signs of past and present life, and even cache rock samples for their future return to Earth.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

2020 was a wild year. Astronomers kicked it off with the discovery of a distant galaxy group. Closer to home, they saw the Milky Way doing the wave and confirmed geologic activity on Mars. The star Betelgeuse underwent a strange and striking dimming event, while naked-eye Comet NEOWISE took our breath away. And a major announcement about Venus sparked intense interest; that researchers are still scrutinizing the result is a signal that science is working as it should.

In May, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule ferried astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil, the first such trip in nearly a decade. Two months later, three new missions launched for Mars to usher in a new era of robotic exploration. 

The global pandemic that defined much of the year changed how scientists worked and shuttered telescopes for months. But despite these challenges, our top 10 space stories show how we pressed on with new, innovative ways to explore our universe.

EGS77 (circled in green) is the earliest galaxy group ever discovered. The inset artist’s concept shows how these galaxies are blowing bubbles of ionized hydrogen around them during the era of reionization.

NASA, ESA and V. Tilvi (ASU)

10. Earliest galaxy group found

The cosmic dark ages began 380,000 years after the Big Bang. At first, no stars or galaxies existed to emit light. But even after these objects began forming, their light remained shrouded because the universe was filled with a “fog” of neutral hydrogen atoms that absorb and scatter ultraviolet light.

Over time, energetic ultraviolet light from early objects ionized these hydrogen atoms, knocking away their electrons. This era of reionization ended 1 billion years after the Big Bang, leaving the universe transparent to light.

But astronomers aren’t sure exactly what types of objects — galaxies, black holes, or stars — were responsible for clearing the fog during reionization, says Vithal Tilvi of Arizona State University, who is part of the Cosmic Deep And Wide Narrowband (Cosmic DAWN) survey seeking to understand this era. Astronomers also aren’t sure how fast the transition from an opaque to a transparent universe occurred.

Then the survey found EGS77: three galaxies shining 680 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just 5 percent its current age. “[It’s] the most distant group of galaxies — and therefore the earliest group of galaxies in the universe — we have ever seen,” says Tilvi, whose team published their find February 27 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

Each galaxy is generating a bubble of ionized hydrogen about 2 million to 3 million light-years across. These bubbles overlap, creating a larger, single region of space that’s free of cosmic fog, allowing light to travel freely. “So far we had [seen] individual galaxies spread across the survey areas. This is the first time we have found a group of galaxies” making the universe transparent, says Tilvi. By virtue of being in a group, EGS77’s combined bubbles allowed the team to spot fainter galaxies than could be seen if they were alone. 

In the future, Tilvi says, using the same technique will allow researchers to discover more faint galaxies. That will ensure astronomers don’t underestimate the number of dim galaxies — which we know outnumber bright ones — responsible for bringing about cosmic dawn.

Cerberus Fossae is a young, geologically active region of Mars responsible for at least two powerful quakes detected by NASA’s InSight lander.

ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

9. Mars and Venus are geologically active

On February 24, 2020, researchers released the initial results of NASA’s InSight lander on Mars. Covering the first 10 months of the mission, the findings included the conclusion that the Red Planet is seismically active. 

Of 174 marsquakes recorded from February to September 2019, scientists traced two of the strongest to Cerberus Fossae. This young region has undergone volcanism and other geologic changes in the last 20 million to 2.5 million years, says Suzanne Smrekar, deputy principal investigator for InSight. “Mars’ surface is on average several billion years old, so anything in the million-year range is super intriguing,” she adds. “Where’s the energy [for the activity] coming from? Why there and not elsewhere on Mars?”

By late September 2020, InSight had recorded about 500 quakes, roughly 50 of which give clues about the planet’s deep interior, Smrekar says. By studying how seismic waves travel through the lower crust, scientists have learned Mars’ crust is likely intact — “more like Earth’s than the Moon’s, where the crust has been pummeled and fragmented by impacts,” she says. “Overall, we are seeing a level of seismicity within the predicted range,” Smrekar concludes — except when it comes to bigger quakes, which are rarer than expected. “It may be that we just need to be patient, or maybe Mars is behaving in a way that we didn’t anticipate.”

The large, circular Aine Corona dominates this Magellan radar image of Venus’ surface. New research suggests dozens of these features are still active on the planet.

NASA/JPL

But Mars isn’t the only active inner planet. On July 20, a paper in Nature Geoscience added evidence for recent volcanic activity on Venus. Researchers led by Anna Gülcher at ETH Zürich in Switzerland looked at circular features called coronae, which scientists think form when faults develop around areas where rising magma lifts up the surface. By comparing 3D models of how coronae form and evolve with observations of Venus’ surface, the team concluded at least 37 of the planet’s large coronae are still evolving — indicating the planet is geologically active.

Smrekar — who is also principal investigator of the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography & Spectroscopy (VERITAS) mission currently under consideration for NASA funding, and who worked on the Magellan spacecraft that orbited Venus in the early 1990s — isn’t surprised. Despite the fact that the idea of Venus as a geologically dead planet has persisted, she says, “There [have been] a bunch of recent studies that point to current, geologically recent activity on Venus. ”

And research into Venus is gaining even more momentum, as evidenced by No. 2 on this list. “I’m positive this will lead to great new science,” Smrekar says.

In late 2019, Betelgeuse sneezed out a cloud of hot gas. Over the next few months, that gas condensed into dust that blocked a portion of the star’s light, as shown in this artist’s concept.

ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

8. Betelgeuse blows its nose in our direction

In late 2019, Orion the Hunter began having shoulder problems: Betelgeuse, the red giant star that marks the figure’s right shoulder, started dimming dramatically. While astronomers know the star varies regularly over time, this episode was both unexpected and unusually extreme, noticeable even to naked-eye observers. By mid-February 2020, the star was just one-third its normal brightness and the astronomical community was abuzz — could this signal an impending supernova explosion?

But, spoiler alert, Betelgeuse remains a fixture in our night sky. It’s also back to normal brightness. So, what happened? An August 13, 2020, paper in The Astrophysical Journal provides the explanation. Based on Hubble Space Telescope observations leading up to the so-called “Great Dimming Event,” the authors concluded the star “sneezed” out a cloud of hot gas from its photosphere in fall 2019. By the time it reached millions of miles from the star, the cloud had cooled and condensed into dust grains that temporarily obscured the star’s southern hemisphere and made Betelgeuse appear dimmer.

According to study leader Andrea Dupree of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, events like this can show astronomers how stars like Betelgeuse lose mass — a process that is poorly understood.

Solar Orbiter snapped this ultraviolet image of the Sun from halfway between Earth and our star. It is the closest photo of the Sun ever taken.

Solar Orbiter/EUI Team/ESA & NASA; CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL

7.

Although the closest star to Earth has been widely studied, the Sun still maintains some secrets. But perhaps not for long, as a veritable armada of solar science missions may soon unlock the last mysteries.

“In my opinion, the most interesting and significant solar discoveries have been coming from the Parker Solar Probe,” says Russell Howard, head of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Solar and Heliospheric Physics branch in Washington, D.C., and principal investigator for Parker’s Wide-field Imager for Solar PRobe (WISPR). Parker, which launched in 2018, “has been making both in situ and remote sensing observations from … much closer to the Sun than ever before.” Recently, the probe revealed that the Sun’s magnetic field is surprisingly complex far from the star. The simple dipole (like a bar magnet) structure researchers expected is there, Howard says, but overlaid with other structures as well, which scientists are now modeling to better understand.

Soon to observe in tandem with Parker is the European Space Agency/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft. After launching February 9, 2020, the probe made its first close pass of the Sun in mid-June. Its 10 instruments are working as expected — or better, says Howard, who is also principal investigator of the Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI).

SoloHI appears less affected by stray light than estimated and the magnetometer observed the signs of a coronal mass ejection event. Ultraviolet images show never-before-seen bright spots on the Sun. Small and ubiquitous, each is about a millionth to a billionth the size of a traditional solar flare. Researchers have christened them “campfires,” and suspect they are either miniature solar flares or perhaps related to nanoflares, which are thought to heat the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona.

The more sensors in the solar wind, the better, Howard says, because that gives scientists a more comprehensive view. Parker and Solar Orbiter are also joined by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, the two Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory probes, the BepiColombo mission, and the ground-based Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. “I am extremely excited about this ‘golden age’ of solar observations from five different space probes and the ground-based observations,” Howard says.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule prepares to dock with the International Space Station during the Demo-2 mission in this artist’s concept.

SpaceX

6. Crew Dragon ferries astronauts, a first

Since the retiremenT of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011, NASA astronauts have depended on Russia for rides to the International Space Station (ISS). But that’s not the case anymore. In a historic first, the private spaceflight company SpaceX launched two American astronauts into orbit May 30 as part of the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission.

The launch, which was streamed online and aired by all major TV news networks, was viewed live by some 10 million people. The following day, the spacecraft docked with the ISS and its passengers, astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken, migrated to the orbiting research lab, where they spent the next two months testing Crew Dragon and carrying out science experiments.

Once their stint on the ISS concluded, the pair hopped back into Crew Dragon and set course for home. Shortly after 1:48 P.M. CDT on August 2, Hurley and Behnken splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. The capsule was plucked from the water by the recovery ship Go Navigator shortly thereafter. Out of an abundance of caution, the astronauts’ departure from Crew Dragon was delayed due to the detection of low levels of a potentially toxic propellant called nitrogen tetroxide. After it was purged from the spacecraft, the astronauts safely exited the sealed crew cabin, proving the privately built capsule’s worth.

On November 15, the first official Crew Dragon mission, dubbed Crew-1, blasted off for the ISS. After docking with the space station the next day, NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, as well as JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, boarded the ISS, where, as of the time of this writing, they continue to work.

Now that two Crew Dragon spacecraft have successfully delivered astronauts to the ISS, the future once again looks bright for American crewed spaceflight.

Our solar system’s second identified extrasolar visitor, Comet Borisov, appeared much more cometlike than ‘Oumuamua. This Hubble image was snapped shortly after Borisov made its closest approach to the Sun in December 2019.

NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

5. A triple comet surprise

When it was Discovered August 30, 2019, the second-known interstellar visitor to our solar system, Comet 2I/Borisov, hadn’t yet made its closest pass to the Sun (called perihelion). Unlike 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua, which was spotted only after it had already rounded our star, astronomers were able to watch Borisov before, during, and after its December 8, 2019, perihelion pass.

John Noonan of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, was part of a team that observed Borisov with the Hubble Space Telescope in late December and early January. They looked for carbon monoxide (CO) sublimating, or turning directly from solid ice to gas, off the surface. “[CO] sublimates at very low temperatures. So, if you see carbon monoxide, that tells you something has been cold for a very long time,” he says. 

On Borisov, “there was more carbon monoxide than there was water, which is pretty much unheard of” for comets in our own solar system, Noonan says. The out-of-whack ratio means Borisov “very clearly formed in a system … very different than our own.” That place could have been around a red dwarf star — stars smaller and cooler than our Sun, and commonplace throughout the galaxy.

As Borisov faded from headlines, comet enthusiasts eagerly awaited C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), whose mid-May glow astronomers predicted would be rivaled only by Venus. But on April 11, amateur astronomer Jose de Queiroz snapped a photo that showed the comet breaking up. Hubble images on April 20 and 23 confirmed the comet had fragmented into several pieces — an interesting turn of events for researchers, but one that quashed any chances of ATLAS achieving “great comet” status.

Comet NEOWISE’s twin tails spread across the sky over West Texas. Now on its way back to the outer solar system, NEOWISE won’t return for nearly 7,000 years.

James Lowrey

Fortunately, C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) stepped up. It flared to naked-eye visibility between magnitude 1 and 2 after rounding the Sun on July 3, just over three months after its discovery. The comet quickly developed a picturesque pair of gas and dust tails that ultimately stretched more than 30° across the sky and offered an ideal target for astrophotographers.

NEOWISE spent several weeks delighting skywatchers as the brightest Northern Hemisphere comet since C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp). “What a great little comet!” astrophotographer John Chumack wrote in an email on July 29 to Astronomy. By then, the comet was a 4th-magnitude target low in the northern sky. “Over the last few weeks, NEOWISE put on a nice show for us Northern Hemisphere observers. Some of my astronomy friends in the Southern Hemisphere have now got to glimpse it and they are reporting it still fading,” he said.

GW190521 signaled the birth of an intermediate-mass black hole. But it didn't sound like a typical "chirp" — it was more like a "bang". 

D. Ferguson, K. Jani, D. Shoemaker, P. Laguna, Georgia Tech, MAYA Collaboration

4. First midsized black hole detected 

Black holes come in a variety of sizes, ranging from a few to billions of times the mass of the Sun. Although there is ample evidence for stellar-mass and supermassive black holes, there is surprisingly little proof of their middleweight brethren. But on May 21, 2019, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and the partnering Virgo site received the first convincing sign: gravitational waves that point to the violent birth of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH). 

After spending more than a year scrutinizing the signal (called GW190521), which lasted just a tenth of a second, on September 2, 2020, an international team of researchers released two papers detailing their results: The gravitational waves originated halfway across the universe and were produced when two hefty black holes merged to create an IMBH about 142 times the mass of the Sun. Their collision also released a stupendous amount of energy, equivalent to roughly eight solar masses, as gravitational waves.

Although this detection confirms that IMBHs exist, it also raises questions. The progenitor black holes weigh in at 66 and 85 solar masses, so the larger one firmly falls in the “pair-instability mass gap.” When most massive stars die, they leave behind a black hole. But when a star weighs 130 to 200 solar masses, photons in its core become so energetic they morph into electron-antielectron pairs, which can’t fully combat gravity. The star becomes extremely unstable and, after going supernova, leaves nothing behind.

“This event opens more questions than it provides answers,” LIGO member Alan Weinstein, professor of physics at Caltech, said in a press release. “From the perspective of discovery and physics, it’s a very exciting thing.”

The Radcliffe Wave (shown in red; the location of our Sun appears in yellow) is a sinuous structure thousands of light-years long and hundreds of light-years wide. It connects several star-forming regions and likely forms the densest part of the spiral arm in which the Sun resides.

Image from the WorldWide Telescope, courtesy of Alyssa Goodman

3. The Milky Way does the wave

Because we are embedded within the Milky Way Galaxy, mapping its large-scale structure is challenging. That is especially the case for galactic star-forming regions, huge clouds of gas and dust whose distance is difficult to measure because they aren’t points like single stars. But new work by Harvard University astronomers published January 7, 2020, in Nature dramatically increased the accuracy of distance measurements to nearby star-forming regions. It also uncovered something unexpected: the Radcliffe Wave.

Nearly 9,000 light-years long and 400 light-years wide, this snaking line of interconnected star-forming regions rises above and dips below the plane of our galaxy. It lies less than 500 light-years from Earth at its nearest point and connects molecular clouds in Orion, Taurus, Perseus, Cepheus, and Cygnus.

“Prior to the discovery of the Radcliffe Wave, star-forming regions were studied in relative isolation. The Radcliffe Wave showed that all these regions are connected on the grandest of scales, via tendrils of filamentary gas, which is something we never knew before,” says Catherine Zucker, whose Ph.D. work at Harvard led the effort to pin down distances to the star-forming regions that make up the Wave. That work involved combining observations of the way intervening dust and gas makes starlight appear redder with accurate distance measurements to those stars from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft.

“Since this effect [reddening] is observable throughout our solar neighborhood, it allowed us to determine the distances to a huge sample of star-forming regions, using the same technique, for the first time,” Zucker says. “Previous distance techniques were piecemeal, obtained inhomogeneously on a cloud-by-cloud basis.”

Her technique revealed, to a factor of five times better than previous measurements, the distances to nearby star-forming regions — and the Radcliffe Wave. “In the future, this will force us to reframe our understanding of star formation on small scales (i.e., within individual molecular clouds) in a larger galactic context,” she says.

Researchers think they’ve detected signs of a biosignature, phosphine (left), in Venus’ clouds. But that claimed detection has since come under heavy scrutiny.

Astronomy: Roen Kelly; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Greaves et al. & JCMT (East Asian Observatory)

2. Astronomers spy phosphine on Venus

Venus is a sizzling world thought by many to be inhospitable to life. Surface temperatures are hot enough to melt lead — almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius) — while the pressure at ground level is more than 90 times that of Earth at sea level. But that hasn’t stopped some, including Carl Sagan, from proposing that life could exist in the more temperate clouds of our sister planet. And now, there could be evidence to support that hypothesis — albeit controversial evidence.

In a paper published September 14 in Nature Astronomy, researchers presented observations of an inexplicable surplus of the rancid gas phosphine in the clouds of Venus. On Earth, microbes produce most phosphine, though it can also be created abiotically under great temperatures and pressures. Measured at a level of some 20 parts per billion, the researchers behind the new paper say no known geological activity or exotic catalysts — such as lightning or meteorites — can explain the strength of their observed signal.

“We are not claiming we have found life on Venus,” said co-author Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist, in a press conference. However, she added, they can’t explain the phosphine’s origin.

Many find the unexplained biosignature, or potential evidence for past or present life, tantalizing. However, others remain skeptical. Chemical compounds each have a unique spectrum, or fingerprint, that depends on the wavelengths of light they absorb. Although the researchers detected this fingerprint of phosphine with two independent telescopes at different times, they only saw it at a single wavelength — one that sulfur dioxide happens to absorb as well.

“As a geochemist, I always worry about detection from one peak,” says Justin Filiberto of the Lunar and Planetary Institute. “A single line is a coincidence, not a detection,” adds astrobiologist Kevin Zahnle of NASA Ames Research Center in California. Still others are concerned about the quality of the noisy data itself, which means many groups are already reanalyzing it.

But if the detection holds up, “it demands follow-up,” says Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at Caltech who was not part of the discovery team. “The top three destinations to look for life in the solar system are Mars, Enceladus, and Europa — and now we should perhaps add Venus to the list.”

Editor's note: Since the publication of this story, new research has come out that suggests the detected signal may have been from sulfur dioxide instead of phosphine.

The United Arab Emirates orbiter named al-Amal (meaning “Hope”).

Astronomy: Roen Kelly

1. Misson to Mars

As usual, the Red PlaneT has had quite a year. Not only did NASA’s InSight lander detect hundreds of marsquakes shaking the planet, but ESA’s Mars Express orbiter found more signs that the world has several underground saltwater lakes buried beneath its south pole. Perhaps most importantly, however, 2020 saw three new spacecraft set forth for the Red Planet, taking advantage of a once-every-26-months alignment that shortens the time and distance required to get from Earth to Mars.

As its first interplanetary mission, the United Arab Emirates launched an orbiter named al-Amal (meaning “Hope”) July 19. The craft is equipped with both an infrared and ultraviolet spectrometer — the former meant to investigate dust, water, and ice in Mars’ lower atmosphere and the latter meant to study oxygen and carbon monoxide in the upper atmosphere. Additionally, the craft carries a multiband camera that can achieve resolutions better than 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel. Altogether, Hope aims to paint a more comprehensive picture of the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

Tianwen-1

Astronomy: Roen Kelly

China jumped into the fray next, launching an orbiter, lander, and rover trio to Mars July 23. Tianwen-1 (which means “heavenly questions”) is the country’s first fully homegrown Mars mission. Engineers plan for the orbiter to release the lander/rover combo after a few months orbiting the Red Planet. It will touch down near Utopia Planitia in the northern hemisphere to seek signs of past or present life. Then the orbiter will enter a polar elliptical orbit around Mars. There, it will serve as a communication relay for the rover and lander, as well as use its seven science instruments to remotely study Mars’ environment and map its surface.

Perseverance

Astronomy: Roen Kelly

Finally, on July 30, NASA launched the Perseverance rover as part of its Mars 2020 mission. This car-sized rover, based largely on Curiosity’s design, has ambitious plans. Equipped with instruments that can create spatial maps showing the elemental and mineralogical composition of rocks, Perseverance will seek evidence that ancient life once existed in Mars’ Jezero Crater. The rover also comes with a few proof-of-concept experiments: an oxygen-production device called MOXIE and a solar-powered helicopter named Ingenuity. Last but not least, Perseverance plans to find, collect, and seal rock and soil samples that will ultimately be returned to Earth for closer inspection with sophisticated lab equipment.

With all these missions expected to reach the Red Planet in February, 2021 is bound to be a big year for Mars.

Stories to watch for in 2021

• The missions that left Earth for Mars in 2020 — the UAE’s Hope, China’s Tianwen-1, and NASA’s Perseverance — will all reach the Red Planet in February 2021.

• NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART mission, will launch July 22, 2021, to binary asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos. The agency’s Lucy spacecraft is scheduled to launch October 16, 2021 — the first mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.

• Because of technical difficulties and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, NASA has updated its target launch date for the James Webb Space Telescope to October 31, 2021.

• Also delayed due to coronavirus, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, which comprises a lander and rover, is now scheduled to launch for the Moon in late 2021.

• The ESA and Roscosmos’ robotic Luna-25 lander aims to put Russia back on the Moon with an anticipated launch date in October 2021.

• First light for the 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is expected in October 2021.

• Both the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter will make flybys of Venus in 2021: Parker will make two, Solar Orbiter will make one.

• The uncrewed Artemis I mission, the first in NASA's plan to return humans to the Moon, is scheduled to launch in 2021. This first mission will combine the new Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule.

Tell children about space and astronauts

On April 12, our country celebrates Cosmonautics Day .

On this day in 1961, our planet was shocked by the unexpected message : "Man in space !" The dream of people about flying into space came true . On an April morning on the ship "Vostok-1" the first cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin flew to space . The flight around the Earth lasted 108 minutes.

The starry sky has always attracted the eyes of people, beckoning with its obscurity. People dreamed of learning about space as many as . Thus began the time of space rockets , satellites, moon rovers.

Let's tell children about space and astronauts !

It is good if parents read books about space with their children, show pictures, look at the globe of the starry sky . You can play games with children on space theme , read and learn poems about space , solve interesting riddles.

Telling children about planets and stars

Our Earth is a huge ball with seas, rivers, mountains, deserts and forests. Also people live. Our Earth and everything that surrounds it is called the Universe, or space . In addition to our blue planet, there are others, as well as stars. Stars are huge balls of light. The sun is also a star. It is located close to the Earth, so we see it and feel its heat. We see the stars only at night, and during the day the Sun overshadows them. There are stars even larger than the Sun. In addition to the Earth, there are 8 more planets in the solar system, each planet has its own path, which is called an orbit.

We remember planets : in order, all planets

on the Moon of Zeille Zvezdoje, it is

to planets calculated

times - Mercury,

Two Venus,

Three - Earth,

Four - Mars.

Five - Jupiter,

Six - Saturn,

Seven - Uranus,

Eighth - Neptune.

Pluto is the ninth farthest.

Jupiter is the largest planet. If you imagine it in the form of a watermelon, then in comparison with it, Pluto will look like a pea. So that children can better remember all the planets, read the poem, let them remember it. You can sculpt planets from plasticine, draw them, cut them out of paper and attach them to a lamp at home.

Animal astronauts

To find out what a person will have to face in space , scientists sent animals to “reconnaissance”. They were dogs, rabbits, mice, even germs. Dogs are smarter animals than mice, but not all dogs were suitable for testing. Purebred dogs are very gentle , they were not suitable for space . Dogs were selected by size, they were trained, accustomed to noise, shaking. Ordinary mongrels approached most of all. The first dog Laika in 1957 was sent to space . She was observed, but she did not return to Earth. Then Belka and Strelka flew to space . In 1960, on August 19, they were launched into space on the prototype of the Vostok spacecraft. They were in space more than a day and returned safely. So scientists proved that a flight to space is possible .

Children about space and cosmonauts

Yuri Gagarin will always remain in our memory as the first cosmonaut . Cities, streets, avenues are named after him. There is a crater on the Moon named after him, as well as a minor planet.

Cosmonauts are courageous people , they train a lot, they need to know and be able to manage a lot by spacecraft .

The first spacewalk was made by Alexei Leonov in 1965. And the first woman - cosmonaut was Valentina Tereshkova, who flew into space in 1963 . She withstood 48 revolutions around the Earth, spent almost three days in space , took photographs that were used to study the aerosol layers of the atmosphere. To fly to space , you need to study a lot and well, be self-possessed, patient, enduring.

Moon

Children always look at the Moon in the sky with interest . It is so different : either in the form of a sickle, or large, round.

The child will be interested to know what is on the moon. You can tell to that the Moon is covered in craters caused by asteroid impacts. If you look at the moon through binoculars, you can see the unevenness of its relief.

Through hardships to the stars: books about space and astronauts for children and teenagers

Sixty years ago, the first manned flight into space took place. Sixty years ago he said, "Let's go!" - and waved his hand... - and in an instant the world changed. It is difficult for modern children and adolescents to imagine the significance of this event then, in 1961. Indeed, today space is a common thing, and every day there are fewer and fewer white spots in its development: movies are being shot at space stations, and it is likely that soon everyone will be able to easily fly to the Moon or Mars. It is all the more important to tell children the truth about those people who stood at the origins of space exploration.

Especially for you, we have collected the most interesting books about space, based on real facts and distinguished by an interesting form of presentation of the material. These are memoirs of cosmonauts, stories about the difficulties of the profession and other cognitive "space" books for children of different ages.

The book contains all publications dedicated to Yuri Gagarin that appeared in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper from 1961 to the present day. Memoirs of those who knew and closely communicated with Gagarin, investigations and new versions of his death, amateur photos and stories about Gagarin of newspaper readers - all these materials are included in the book in the form in which they were published by Komsomolskaya Pravda. And this is priceless evidence of time. The compiler was the space correspondent of Komsomolskaya Pravda Alexander Milkus, who has been working in the editorial office since 1997 years old to this day - a person who knows the material firsthand. After reading the book, you will re-evaluate the scale of Gagarin's personality and his role in history. The book is addressed to the widest readership: it will be interesting to read for both teenagers and adults.

Yuri Gagarin. How it was. First man in space Alexander Milkus

Writer Yuri Nagibin has been collecting materials about Yuri Gagarin for many years. He communicated with relatives and friends of the astronaut, wrote down their memories. At 19In 1976, according to Nagibin's script, the feature film "This is how the legend began" was created, which tells about Gagarin's childhood. And after a while, a book appeared in which the writer collected all the information he had. Since then, the book has gone through many reprints, and interest in it has not waned: after all, Nagibin's stories are based on real facts. This is not a dry biography of an astronaut, these are separate stories from his life, which often resemble an adventure novel. At the end of the book there is a chronicle of the life of Yuri Gagarin. The materials are accompanied by color drawings by German Mazurin, a classic of book illustration.

Stories about Gagarin Yuriy Nagibin

Another book based on documentary materials. The author is a famous pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union, who personally knew Yuri Gagarin. From the book you will learn about the childhood and youth of the first cosmonaut, about how he went to his dream, about the integrity of character and the importance of constant work on oneself. Motivational book for younger students.

Yuri Gagarin — cosmonaut-1 Mikhail Vodopyanov

A set of demonstration materials will tell preschoolers and younger students about twelve outstanding astronauts. These are Yuri Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova, German Titov, Alexei Leonov, Neil Armstrong, Yang Liwei and others. The set contains portraits of astronauts with a detailed biography on the back. This set is perfect for kindergarten or school. It can be used for home learning and tell your child about famous space explorers on your own. In Soviet times, the names of all cosmonauts were widely known, today, unfortunately, they are not so well known. This kit will help fill existing gaps in knowledge.

Famous astronauts Tatyana Tsvetkova

The author of the book, Svetlana Savitskaya, is not a famous female cosmonaut, but her full namesake. Apparently, with such a name and surname, it was impossible not to deal with the space theme, and Svetlana decided to collect under one cover different stories from the life of astronauts, told to her by eyewitnesses of the events. The result is an interesting and entertaining book from which you can learn how they prepared for the first flights into space, how they conducted numerous experiments with plants and animals in zero gravity, and many other amazing facts.

Tales of astronauts Svetlana Savitskaya

The heroes of Gael Almere's black-and-white comics - the mouse Mousel, the platypus Ooty and the beaver Beaver - will tell young readers about the structure of our Universe and teach them to find constellations in a cluster of stars. Each reader can choose a character for himself, focusing on his own knowledge base: someone is a dock in space matters, someone is taking their first steps in this field of knowledge. The comic will be interesting and understandable to absolutely everyone, because the characters talk about complex things simply and fascinatingly. There is even a guide to observing the stars and planets at the end of the book. Color accents are present in black and white drawings: stars, rainbows, northern lights, etc. The book combines the formats of comics and educational educational literature. The publication is suitable for reading to schoolchildren 8+ who are passionate about astronomy and want to learn as much as possible about space.

Under the starry sky: learning to observe the planets and look for constellations Gael Almere

The author needs no introduction: Andrey Zhvalevsky is a well-known contemporary writer, winner of numerous literary competitions, who, in collaboration with Evgenia Pasternak, has created many excellent teenage books. This time, Zhvalevsky offers readers a brief history of the conquest of outer space, from antiquity to the present day. Zhvalevsky talks not only about achievements, but also about the price that astronauts have to pay for their discoveries. Here is the fate of the dog Laika, who made the only space flight, and the tragic story of the pilots Gagarin and Seregin, who died during the next flight ... It is noteworthy that the author provides in the book the most relevant data on the study of space. He draws large-scale prospects for space exploration in the near future. It is no coincidence that at the beginning of the book the names of science fiction writers who inspired scientists to explore space are listed. After all, many of their predictions came true! And what has not yet come true may soon happen not without the participation of today's boys and girls. The text is accompanied by detailed color illustrations created by the artist Fyodor Vladimirov.

We are in space. How a man went to the stars Andrey Grivalevsky

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