Latest news with #EuropaClipper
News18
a day ago
- Science
- News18
NASA Finds Giant Gas Planet In Earth's 'Neighbourhood' Whose Moons Could Host Life
Alpha Centauri's possible new gas giant is too hostile for life itself but could have icy moons worth exploring. Space scientists say they have found strong evidence that there is a giant gas planet in the nearest star system to our own. The James Webb Space Telescope found a lifeless planet four-and-a-half light years away from Earth, making it a close neighbour to Earth in astronomical terms, and could have moons that sustain life, according to space agency Nasa and broadcaster BBC. The lifeless plant was found in the star system Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to the Milky Way. The potential planet was detected in 2024 but it had disappeared in follow-up observations. The broadcaster said that astronomers must now look again to prove it definitely exists. '"Four years is a long way but in galaxy terms, it's very close – it's in our neighbourhood," said Dr Carly Howett, associate professor of space instrumentation at the University of Oxford, while speaking to BBC. 'It is around a star that is Sun-like and about the same temperature and brightness. That's really important if we want to think about habitable worlds," Dr Howett was quoted as saying by the broadcaster. The planet is thought to resemble our solar system's gas giants, Saturn and Jupiter, and is likely covered by a thick gas layer. This means the planet itself cannot support life, but it could host moons that are habitable. In our own solar system, Jupiter and other planets have icy moons that scientists believe could sustain life. Researchers are exploring this possibility through missions such as Europa Clipper and Juice. However, those moons orbit planets far from the Sun, while this newly found planet is comparatively close to its own star. 'These are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world's most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly," Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-first author of the new discoveries, was quoted as saying by the UK-based broadcaster, while referring to the James Webb Space Telescope, which is the closest thing scientists have to taking photographs of distant objects. Scientists believe intense light from nearby massive stars may have hidden a newly discovered planet from view. The planet was first spotted in August 2024 but could not be found when astronomers searched for it again. 'Probably the planet was either behind the star or too close to be able to see it. You need an element of luck," said Dr Howett. Experts say the glare from giant stars can make it difficult to detect smaller, dimmer objects in the same region. Astronomers will continue to search for signs of the planet, using more advanced equipment in the coming years. One such tool will be NASA's Grace Roman Space Telescope, expected to begin operations in 2027. The James Webb Space Telescope will also help by using spectral imaging to reveal what the planet is made of. These future observations could provide a clearer view of the planet's features and shed light on whether any moons around it could support life. News18's viral page features trending stories, videos, and memes, covering quirky incidents, social media buzz from india and around the world, Also Download the News18 App to stay updated! view comments First Published: August 11, 2025, 17:00 IST News viral NASA Finds Giant Gas Planet In Earth's 'Neighbourhood' Whose Moons Could Host Life Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Scientific American
a day ago
- Science
- Scientific American
Rogue Worlds May Not Be So Lonely After All, Europa Clipper Completes Key Test, and RFK, Jr., Pulls $500 Million in mRNA Vaccine Funding
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Let's kick off the week with our usual science news roundup. Let's start with some space news. Have you ever heard of rogue planets? They sound pretty cool, and they are: the term refers to exoplanets that roam free instead of orbiting a star. Some of them may be objects that formed like stars, coalescing in the wake of a giant gas cloud's collapse but never gaining enough mass to actually start the process of nuclear fusion. Others may get their start in the usual planetary way—forming from the gas and dust around a star—before getting ejected out into open space for some reason or another. According to a preprint study made available last month, the life of a rogue planet might not always be as lonely as it sounds. Some of them may be able to form little planetary systems of their own. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The researchers behind the new study, which still has to go through peer review, used instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope to gather information about eight different rogue planets, each with a mass around five to 10 times greater than Jupiter's. Based on infrared observations, the scientists say, six of the objects seem to have warm dust around them, indicating the presence of the kinds of disks where planets form. The researchers also saw silicate grains in the disks—evidence that the dust is growing and crystallizing. That's typically a disk's signature move when it's gearing up to make some baby planets. This study didn't actually find any hints of fully grown planets orbiting those giant rogue worlds, but it suggests that such a phenomenon might be possible. As wild as it is to imagine a lonely world roaming space without a star to orbit, it's even more intriguing to picture a whole system of planets spinning in the dark. Speaking of space, NASA's Europa Clipper, which is expected to arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030 so it can study the gas giant's icy moon, has completed an important test. Back in March 2025 the Europa Clipper flew past Mars and conducted a test of its REASON instrument. That's short for Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface. This radar is a crucial component of the clipper's mission because it's designed to peek beneath the icy shell of Europa's surface, perhaps even glimpsing the ocean beneath it. The radar will also help NASA scientists study the ice itself, along with the topography of Europa's surface. The clipper features a huge pair of solar arrays that carry the slender antennas REASON needs to do its work. The antennas span a distance of about 58 feet, while the arrays collectively stretch the length of a basketball court, which is necessary for them to gather enough light—Europa gets just around 1/25th as much sunlight as we do on Earth. The sheer size of all those components made it impossible to fully test REASON on Earth because once the flight hardware was finished, the clipper had to be kept inside a clean room. NASA simply didn't have a sterile chamber big enough to properly assess the radar. When Europa flew by Mars on March 1, REASON sent and received radio waves for about 40 minutes, collecting 60 gigabytes of data. Earlier this month NASA announced that scientists had completed their analysis of the data and deemed the REASON instrument ready for prime time. Let's move on to some public health news—first, vaccines. Last Tuesday, the Guardian reported that COVID cases in the U.S. are on the rise, as has been the case each summer since the start of the pandemic. Though this current surge has seen case numbers growing more slowly than in previous years, experts who spoke to the Guardian voiced concerns about what the coming months could bring. In May, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials wrote that, come fall, COVID boosters may be limited to older people and individuals at higher risk of getting severely ill. Even if this move doesn't outright prevent people from vaccinating themselves and their kids, public health experts are concerned that confusion around availability and insurance coverage could lead to a worrisome dip in booster administration. Meanwhile, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced last Tuesday that his department is canceling almost $500 million in funding for the development of mRNA vaccines. While experts say mRNA vaccines are safe, have the potential to curb future pandemics, and have already saved millions of lives, Kennedy has come out against the technology. Mike Osterholm, a University of Minnesota expert on infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness, told the Associated Press that he didn't think he'd witnessed 'a more dangerous decision in public health' in his 50 years in the field. We're hoping to focus on explaining mRNA technology in an upcoming episode, so let us know if you have any questions we can answer. You can send those to ScienceQuickly@ In other public health news, a group of scientists say bird flu could be airborne on some dairy farms. In a preprint paper recently posted online, researchers report finding H5N1 influenza virus in both large and small aerosol particles in air sampled from California farms. The scientists also found viral particles in milk, on milking equipment and in wastewater. While H5N1 isn't currently thought to pose a major health risk to humans, its continued circulation in mammals leaves us open to potentially dangerous mutations of the virus. We'll end this week's roundup with a fun little story about how terrifying humans are. Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Department of Agriculture workers are blasting human music and voices from speaker-touting drones to scare wolves away from livestock. Apparently the audio selections for these so-called wolf-hazing attempts include the sounds of fireworks, AC/DC's song 'Thunderstruck' and, perhaps most delightfully, that scene from the movie Marriage Story where Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver scream at each other. Apparently Driver and ScarJo are doing the trick: the Wall Street Journal reported that noisemaking drones were deployed in southern Oregon after wolves killed 11 cows in the area over the span of 20 days. Once the drones were in hazing mode, there were reportedly just two fatal wolf attacks on cattle in an 85-day period. There's no word yet on how the wolves feel about Laura Dern. That's all for this week's science news roundup. We'll be back on Wednesday to talk about the latest advances in male contraception. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
Yahoo
05-08-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA's Europa Clipper radar passes key test during Mars flyby
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft successfully tested its ice-penetrating radar system during a close flyby of Mars earlier this year, proving that the probe is ready for its main mission: peering beneath the frozen crust of Jupiter's moon Europa to search for signs of subsurface liquid water and possibly even determine if those oceans have the ingredients to form and sustain life. Launched in October 2024, Europa Clipper is on a 1.8-billion-mile (2.9-billion-kilometer) journey to study Jupiter and its moons. On March 1, it flew within 550 miles (884 kilometers) of Mars' surface in a planned gravity assist maneuver to fine-tune its trajectory. The flyby also provided a valuable opportunity to test Clipper's two onboard scientific instruments in deep space conditions, including its radar system, known as REASON (short for Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface). The instrument successfully sent and received signals that bounced off the volcanic plains of Mars "without a hitch," according to a NASA statement. The 40-minute radar test produced approximately 60 gigabytes of data, confirming that the system is performing as intended and ready for its primary mission at Jupiter's icy moon Europa, the statement read. "We got everything out of the flyby that we dreamed," Don Blankenship, a research professor at the University of Texas at Austin who serves as the principal investigator for the REASON instrument, said in the statement. "The goal was to determine the radar's readiness for the Europa mission, and it worked. Every part of the instrument proved itself to do exactly what we intended." REASON is designed to take a look inside Europa primarily by transmitting radio waves that reflect off structures within the underlying ice, according to NASA. The radar uses two pairs of slender antennas mounted on Europa Clipper's massive solar arrays to transmit and receive signals. The antennas span roughly 58 feet (17.6 meters), while the solar arrays to which they are attached are the size of a basketball court, designed to capture as much sunlight as possible in Europa's dim environment, where sunlight is only about 1/25th as strong as it is on Earth. While engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) conducted extensive prototype testing outdoors using towers on a hilltop above the lab, the final flight hardware had to be kept sterile and tested indoors — limiting full-scale trials. A proper echo test of the fully integrated system would have required a chamber at least 250 feet (76 meters) long, nearly the length of a football field, the statement read. That made the Mars flyby the first opportunity to test the radar system in its complete, operational form in space. RELATED STORIES — Europa Clipper: A complete guide to NASA's astrobiology mission — NASA's Europa Clipper will fly close to Mars today on way to Jupiter's icy moon — NASA's Europa Clipper snaps its 1st starry image en route to Jupiter's icy moon "All of us who had worked so hard to make this test happen — and the scientists seeing the data for the first time — were ecstatic, saying, 'Oh, look at this! Oh, look at that!' Trina Ray, the deputy science manager for Europa Clipper at JPL, said in the statement. The spacecraft is currently about 280 million miles (450 million kilometers) from Earth and is set to receive another gravity assist — this time as it whips around Earth — in December 2026. It is expected to arrive in the Jupiter system in 2030, where it will begin a 40-flyby mission of Europa.
Yahoo
26-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA spacecraft snaps a rare photo of Mars and its moons together
On its long journey to the outer solar system, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft made a planned detour — and seized a striking photo opportunity. In a single frame, the uncrewed Europa Clipper caught Mars alongside both of its tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, as they waltzed through space, all glowing in infrared light. The image, presented below, is more than a pretty picture. It offers a rare look at a planetary trio not often seen together, and it provided mission engineers a crucial chance to fine-tune the spacecraft's thermal camera as it zipped past the Red Planet. From about 560,000 miles away — more than twice the distance between Earth and the moon — Europa Clipper's infrared camera snapped 200 individual frames over the course of 20 minutes on Feb. 28. The frames were later stitched together to reveal the glowing heat signatures of Mars, Phobos, and Deimos. The result is a surreal view: Mars dominates the center, faintly surrounded by image-processing artifacts. At the upper left, Deimos appears as a tiny glowing dot. Closer in is Phobos, Mars' larger and innermost moon. To make the dim moons visible — each about 250 times fainter than Mars — engineers brightened the image. From a half-million miles away, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft captured Mars with its two moons, Phobos and Deimos, in space. To see a labeled view, swipe the slider above to the left. Visible on the planet itself is a dark patch near the top, marking the frigid northern polar cap, where temperatures dip to about -190 degrees Fahrenheit. A circular region shows Elysium Mons, one of Mars' giant volcanoes. The Martian moons are rarely seen together, let alone with their host planet. The first time Phobos and Deimos were both caught on camera was in November 2009, when the Mars Express orbiter snagged the unprecedented image, according to the European Space Agency. The portrait, which showcased the duo lined up, one behind the other, took years of planning, precise knowledge of their orbits, and some lucky viewing geometry. Scientists know relatively little about Phobos and Deimos, two of the smallest known moons in the solar system. Both are "blacker than coal and look like battered potatoes," according to ESA. Phobos is the larger of the pair, about 14 miles wide, and circles Mars three times a day. Deimos, just seven or eight miles across, orbits Mars every 30 hours. Right now researchers aren't sure where the moons came from, and it remains a source of mystery. Some believe they could have been asteroids captured in orbit around the Red Planet. Others think they could be chunks of Mars itself, blown out by a giant collision billions of years ago. The new Europa Clipper image was taken using one of the spacecraft's thermal sensors, designed to detect heat instead of visible light. This tool will later be used to explore Jupiter's moon Europa, a frozen world believed to harbor a salty ocean beneath its icy crust — and possibly the conditions to support life. The instrument — the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System, or E-Themis — should help identify places where Europa's inner ocean might be interacting with its frozen shell — a key clue in the search for alien life. The spacecraft used Mars' gravity in March to tweak its path, a maneuver known as a gravity assist, on its way to the outer solar system. That close encounter provided a convenient moment to test instruments — and admire Earth's ruddy neighbor. Just a few days later, on March 12, another spacecraft made a pop-in for a gravity assist and some photos. That robotic spacecraft is on the European Hera mission to study the asteroid NASA intentionally crashed into three years ago. Europa Clipper launched from Florida in October 2024 and is scheduled to arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030. Once there, it will perform nearly 50 flybys of Europa, gathering detailed measurements of its surface, interior, and chemistry. If NASA finds that Europa is a habitable place, a second Europa mission could return to determine if there are indeed any inhabitants. Solve the daily Crossword
Indian Express
22-07-2025
- Science
- Indian Express
Ahead of NASA's mission, James Webb telescope finds cues of a liquid water ocean under Europa's surface
Jupiter's icy moon Europa has been one of the most promising places in our solar system to find environments suitable for life beyond Earth. In the 1960s, ground-based telescopic observations noted that Europa's surface was mostly made of water ice, with scientists speculating that the almost Earth-sized moon has a saltwater ocean that holds twice as much water as our planet. Now, new observations from the James Webb Telescope (JWST) are revealing that Europa, which was often pictured as a still, silent shell actually has an active surface. In a series of experiments conducted by Southwest Research Institute, it was found that Europa's surface ice is crystallising at different rates in different places. This suggests that the planet is currently undergoing geologic activity, with scientists labelling the ongoing cycle between the subsurface and surface as 'chaos terrains'. The study focused on two regions located in Europa's southern hemisphere – Tar Regio and Powys Regio, with the latter often referred to as one of the most intriguing areas on the moon's surface. In these locations, the James Webb Telescope found crystallised ice both on the surface and below it. The experiments were crucial for scientists to understand how the ice transforms between different states. The result of these experiments, when combined with the newly received data from the James Webb Telescope, hints that Europa's subsurface may be hiding a huge liquid ocean beneath the surface. Scientists also found some clues that Europa may have Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen peroxide. Upon further evaluation, it was found that CO2 on Europa's surface is unstable due to the moon's radioactive environment, which suggests that these geological processes were recent. Ujjwal Raut, a program manager at the Southwest Research Institute and the co-author of the study, said that the 'data showed strong indications that what we are seeing must be sourced from the interior, perhaps from a subsurface ocean nearly 20 miles (30 kilometers) beneath Europa's thick icy shell. The evidence for a liquid ocean underneath Europa's icy shell is mounting, which makes this so exciting as we continue to learn more.' In October last year, NASA launched Europa Clipper, a spacecraft that will explore Europa to determine if its underground ocean is habitable. However, the spacecraft will first head towards Mars and take around five and a half years to reach Jupiter's icy moon.
