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By NASA
This graphic shows a three-dimensional map of stars near the Sun. The blue haloes represent stars observed with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Astronomers are using these X-ray data to determine how habitable exoplanets may be based on whether they receive lethal radiation from the stars they orbit. This research will help guide observations with the next generation of telescopes aiming to make the first images of planets like Earth. Researchers used almost 10 days of Chandra observations and 26 days of XMM observations to examine the X-ray behavior of 57 nearby stars, some of them with known planets. Results were presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, by Breanna Binder (California State Polytechnic University in Pomona). To view the full article, visit: https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2024/exoplanets/.
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By NASA
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Movie: Cal Poly Pomona/B. Binder; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss This graphic shows a three-dimensional map of stars near the Sun. These stars are close enough that they could be prime targets for direct imaging searches for planets using future telescopes. The blue haloes represent stars that have been observed with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. The yellow star at the center of this diagram represents the position of the Sun. The concentric rings show distances of 5, 10, and 15 parsecs (one parsec is equivalent to roughly 3.2 light-years).
Astronomers are using these X-ray data to determine how habitable exoplanets may be based on whether they receive lethal radiation from the stars they orbit, as described in our latest press release. This type of research will help guide observations with the next generation of telescopes aiming to make the first images of planets like Earth.
Researchers examined stars that are close enough to Earth that telescopes set to begin operating in the next decade or two — including the Habitable Worlds Observatory in space and Extremely Large Telescopes on the ground — could take images of planets in the stars’ so-called habitable zones. This term defines orbits where the planets could have liquid water on their surfaces.
There are several factors influencing what could make a planet suitable for life as we know it. One of those factors is the amount of harmful X-rays and ultraviolet light they receive, which can damage or even strip away the planet’s atmosphere.
Based on X-ray observations of some of these stars using data from Chandra and XMM-Newton, the research team examined which stars could have hospitable conditions on orbiting planets for life to form and prosper. They studied how bright the stars are in X-rays, how energetic the X-rays are, and how much and how quickly they change in X-ray output, for example, due to flares. Brighter and more energetic X-rays can cause more damage to the atmospheres of orbiting planets.
The researchers used almost 10 days of Chandra observations and about 26 days of XMM observations, available in archives, to examine the X-ray behavior of 57 nearby stars, some of them with known planets. Most of these are giant planets like Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune, while only a handful of planets or planet candidates could be less than about twice as massive as Earth.
These results were presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, by Breanna Binder (California State Polytechnic University in Pomona).
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge, Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission/chandra-x-ray-observatory/
Visual Description:
This video shows a three-dimensional map of stars near the Sun on the left side of our screen and a dramatic illustration of a star with a planet orbiting around it on the right side.
The star map on the left shows many circular dots of different colors floating within an illustrated three-sided box. Each wall of the box is constructed in a grid pattern, with straight lines running horizontally and vertically like chicken wire. Dots that are colored blue represent stars that have been observed with NASA’s Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton.
Suspended in the box, at about the halfway point, is a series of three concentric circles surrounding a central dot that indicates the placement of our Sun. The circles represent distances of 5, 10, and 15 parsecs. One parsec is equivalent to roughly 3.2 light-years.
In the animation, the dot filled, chicken wire box spins around slowly, first on its X axis and then on its Y axis, providing a three-dimensional exploration of the plotted stars.
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Chandra X-ray Center
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Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center
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By NASA
3 Min Read Student Teams to Help Fill the Inflatable Void with Latest Student Challenge
This year will be a “BIG” year for several college and university teams as they research, design, and demonstrate novel inflatable systems configured for future lunar operations through a NASA-sponsored engineering competition.
NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge asked student innovators to propose novel inflatable component and system concepts that could benefit future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond.
The Inflatable Systems for Lunar Operations theme allowed teams to submit various technology concepts such as soft robotics, deployable infrastructure components, emergency shelters or other devices for extended extravehicular activities, pressurized tunnels and airlocks, and debris shields and dust protection systems. Inflatable systems could greatly reduce the mass and stowed volume of science and exploration payloads, critical for lowering costs to deep-space destinations.
Award values vary between ~$100,000 and $150,000 and are based on each team’s prototype and budget.
The 2024 BIG Idea Challenge awardees are:
Arizona State UniversityTempe, ArizonaAegis – Inflatable Lunar Landing Pad SystemAdvisors: Tyler Smith, Dr. James Bell, James Rice, Josh ChangBrigham Young University Provo, UtahUntethered and Modular Inflatable Robots for Lunar OperationsAdvisors: Dr. Nathan Usevitch, Dr. Marc KillpackCalifornia Institute of Technology, with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cislune and VJ TechnologiesPasadena, CaliforniaPILLARS: Plume-deployed Inflatable for Launch and Landing Abrasive Regolith ShieldingAdvisors: Dr. Soon-Jo Chung, Kalind CarpenterNorthwestern University, with National Aerospace CorporationEvanston, Illinois METALS: Metallic Expandable Technology for Artemis Lunar StructuresAdvisors: Dr. Ian McCue, Dr. Ryan TrubyUniversity of Maryland College Park, MarylandAuxiliary Inflatable Wheels for Lunar RoverAdvisor: Dr. David AkinUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor, MichiganCargo-BEEP (Cargo Balancing Expandable Exploration Platform)Advisor: Dr. John Shaw
Once funded, finalist teams continue designing, building, and testing their concepts, which could lead to NASA innovations that augment technology currently in development. Work performed by the teams culminates in a final technical paper, prototype demonstration, and potential opportunity to present in front of a diverse panel of NASA and industry experts.
As a program affiliated with NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII), the BIG Idea Challenge incubates new ideas from the future workforce. Through the challenge, student teams aid LSII’s mission to advance transformative capabilities for lunar surface exploration across NASA’s Space Technology portfolio.
We truly love engaging with the academic community and incorporating the students’ novel ideas into our approaches to technology development. We need cutting-edge and groundbreaking technologies for successful space exploration missions, so it’s important that we continue to push the envelope and ignite innovation. I can’t think of a better way to do that than collaborating with bright, creative minds who will comprise our future workforce.
Niki Werkheiser
Director of Technology Maturation at NASA
Since its inception in 2016, the challenge has invited students to think critically and creatively about several defined aerospace topics, including extreme terrain robotics, lunar metal production, Mars greenhouse development, and more. Each year, the theme is tied directly to a current aerospace challenge NASA is working on.
Through the BIG Idea Challenge, we enhance the university experience by providing students and faculty with more opportunities to engage in meaningful NASA projects. This not only enables a multitude of networking opportunities for the students but also gives them a real sense of accomplishment and lets them know that their ideas are important.
Through the BIG Idea Challenge, we enhance the university experience by providing students and faculty with more opportunities to engage in meaningful NASA projects. This not only enables a multitude of networking opportunities for the students but also gives them a real sense of accomplishment and lets them know that their ideas are important.
Tomas Gonzalez-Torres
NASA’s Space Grant project manager
The BIG Idea Challenge is one of several Artemis student challenges sponsored through NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development (GCD) program and the agency’s Office of STEM Engagement Space Grant Project. It is managed by a partnership between the National Institute of Aerospace and The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
BIG Idea supports GCD’s efforts to rapidly mature innovative and high-impact capabilities and technologies for possible infusion in future NASA missions, while creating a rewarding student and faculty experience. The 16-month intensive project-based program supports innovations initiated and furthered by the student teams that can possibly be adopted by NASA, and it works to endeavor ambitious new missions beyond Earth.
Learn more about this year’s BIG Idea Challenge
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By NASA
5 Min Read The CUTE Mission: Innovative Design EnablesObservations of Extreme Exoplanets from a SmallPackage
Fig 1: Artist’s concept of the CUTE mission on-orbit. CUTE has been operating in a 560 km sun-synchronous orbit since September 2021. Credits:
NASA Of the approximately 5,500 exoplanets discovered to date, many have been found to orbit very close to their parent stars. These close-in planets provide a unique opportunity to observe in detail the phenomena critical to the development and evolution of our own solar system, including atmospheric mass loss and interactions with the host star. NASA’s Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) mission, launched in September 2021, employed a new design that enabled exploration of these processes using a small spacecraft for the first time. CUTE provides unique spectral diagnostics that trace the escaping atmospheres of close-in, ultra-hot, giant planets. In addition, CUTE’s dedicated mission architecture enables the survey duration required to characterize atmospheric structure and variability on these worlds.
Atmospheric escape is a fundamental process that affects the structure, composition, and evolution of many planets. It has operated on all of the terrestrial planets in our solar system and likely drives the demographics of the short-period planet population characterized by NASA’s Kepler mission. In fact, atmospheric escape ultimately may be the determining factor when predicting the habitability of temperate, terrestrial exoplanets. Escaping exoplanet atmospheres were first observed in the hydrogen Lyman-alpha line (121nm) in 2003. However, contamination by neutral hydrogen in both the intervening interstellar medium and Earth’s upper atmosphere makes obtaining high-quality Lyman-alpha transit measurements for most exoplanets very challenging. By contrast, a host star’s near-ultraviolet (NUV; 250 – 350 nm) flux is two to three orders of magnitude higher than Lyman-alpha, and transit light curves can be measured against a smoother stellar surface intensity distribution.
This knowledge motivated a team led by Dr. Kevin France at the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics to design the CUTE mission (Fig 1). The team proposed the CUTE concept to NASA through the ROSES/Astrophysics Research and Analysis (APRA) Program in February 2016 and NASA funded the project in July 2017. The CUTE instrument pioneered use of two technologies on a small space mission: a novel, rectangular Cassegrain telescope (20cm × 8cm primary mirror) and a miniature, low-resolution spectrograph operating from approximately 250 – 330 nm. The rectangular telescope was fabricated to accommodate the unique instrument volume of the 6U CubeSat form factor, an adaptation that delivers approximately three times the collecting area of a traditional, circular aperture telescope. The compact spectrograph meets the spectral resolution requirements of the mission while using scaled down component technology adapted from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Fig 2 – Image of the CUTE science instrument, including rectangular telescope and miniaturized spectrograph, mounted to the spacecraft bus. Credit: CUTE Team, University of Colorado This novel instrument design enables CUTE to measure NUV with similar precision as larger missions even in the more challenging thermal and pointing environment experienced by a CubeSat. In addition, the CUTE instrument’s NUV bandpass enables it to measure iron and magnesium ions from highly extended atmospheric layers that ground-based instruments cannot access. The CUTE science instrument is incorporated into a 6U Blue Canyon Technologies spacecraft bus that provides power, command and data handling, attitude control, and communications. This CubeSat platform enables CUTE to observe numerous transits of a given planet. The spectrogram from the CUTE instrument is recorded on a UV-optimized commercial off-the-shelf charge-coupled device (CCD), onboard data processing is performed, and data products are relayed to a ground station at the University of Colorado.
Fig 3 –Graduate student Arika Egan (center) and electrical engineer Nicholas DeCicco (left) install CUTE into the LANDSAT-9 secondary payload dispenser at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Credit: CUTE Team, University of Colorado CUTE was launched as a secondary payload on NASA’s LANDSAT-9 mission on September 27, 2021 into a Sun-synchronous orbit with a 560 km apogee. CUTE deployed from the payload dispenser (Fig 2) approximately two hours after launch and then deployed its solar arrays. Spacecraft beacon signals were identified by the amateur radio community on the first orbit and communications were established with the ground station at the University of Colorado the following day. On-orbit commissioning of the spacecraft and instrument concluded in February 2022 and the mission has been conducting science operations since that time.
As of February 2024, CUTE is actively acquiring science and calibration data (Fig 3), and has observed between 6 and 11 transits of seven different exoplanetary systems. Data downlink efficiency is the primary factor limiting the number of targets observed over the course of the mission. CUTE light curves and transit spectroscopy are revealing extended NUV atmospheres on some planets (Fig 4) and potential time variability in the atmospheric transmission spectra of others. For example, observations of the ultra-hot exoplanet, Jupiter WASP-189b, indicate a highly extended atmosphere. Magnesium ions are observed to be gravitationally unbound from the planet, which is evidence for active escape of heavy elements in this system. CUTE data are being archived by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI).
Fig 4 – Flight data from CUTE showing raw CCD observations (top) and calibrated one-dimensional spectra (bottom). Image credit: France et al (2023) Fig 5 – CUTE NUV transit light curve of the ultra-hot exoplanet, Jupiter WASP-189b. This light curve was created from three separate transit visits to the planet. Image credit: Sreejith, et al (2023) CUTE successfully demonstrated the use of a non-circular telescope and miniature spectrograph design for small space missions, an approach that has been subsequently adopted by several NASA and international mission designs, including NASA’s new Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy (MANTIS) mission. CUTE’s demonstration of sub-1% NUV precision has shown that the precision achieved by large UV astronomy missions can also be achieved by a CubeSat. In addition, student training and early-career mentorship have been key ingredients to CUTE’s mission success. So far, over 20 early career students and professionals have trained and participated in CUTE activities—ranging from science to engineering to operations.
PROJECT LEAD
Professor Kevin France, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics/University of Colorado
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION
Astrophysics Division Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program
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Last Updated Feb 27, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A NASA study expands the search for life beyond our solar system by indicating that 17 exoplanets (worlds outside our solar system) could have oceans of liquid water, an essential ingredient for life, beneath icy shells. Water from these oceans could occasionally erupt through the ice crust as geysers. The science team calculated the amount of geyser activity on these exoplanets, the first time these estimates have been made. They identified two exoplanets sufficiently close where signs of these eruptions could be observed with telescopes.
The search for life elsewhere in the Universe typically focuses on exoplanets that are in a star’s “habitable zone,” a distance where temperatures allow liquid water to persist on their surfaces. However, it’s possible for an exoplanet that’s too distant and cold to still have an ocean underneath an ice crust if it has enough internal heating. Such is the case in our solar system where Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, have subsurface oceans because they are heated by tides from the gravitational pull of the host planet and neighboring moons.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this image of Enceladus on Nov. 30, 2010. The shadow of the body of Enceladus on the lower portions of the jets is clearly visible.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute These subsurface oceans could harbor life if they have other necessities, such as an energy supply as well as elements and compounds used in biological molecules. On Earth, entire ecosystems thrive in complete darkness at the bottom of oceans near hydrothermal vents, which provide energy and nutrients.
“Our analyses predict that these 17 worlds may have ice-covered surfaces but receive enough internal heating from the decay of radioactive elements and tidal forces from their host stars to maintain internal oceans,” said Dr. Lynnae Quick of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Thanks to the amount of internal heating they experience, all planets in our study could also exhibit cryovolcanic eruptions in the form of geyser-like plumes.” Quick is lead author of a paper on the research published on October 4 in the Astrophysical Journal.
The team considered conditions on 17 confirmed exoplanets that are roughly Earth-sized but less dense, suggesting that they could have substantial amounts of ice and water instead of denser rock. Although the planets’ exact compositions remain unknown, initial estimates of their surface temperatures from previous studies all indicate that they are much colder than Earth, suggesting that their surfaces could be covered in ice.
The study improved estimates of each exoplanet’s surface temperature by recalculating using the known surface brightness and other properties of Europa and Enceladus as models. The team also estimated the total internal heating in these exoplanets by using the shape of each exoplanet’s orbit to get the heat generated from tides and adding it to the heat expected from radioactive activity. Surface temperature and total heating estimates gave the ice layer thickness for each exoplanet since the oceans cool and freeze at the surface while being heated from the interior. Finally, they compared these figures to Europa’s and used estimated levels of geyser activity on Europa as a conservative baseline to estimate geyser activity on the exoplanets.
They predict that surface temperatures are colder than previous estimates by up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius). Estimated ice shell thickness ranged from about 190 feet (58 meters) for Proxima Centauri b and one mile (1.6 kilometers) for LHS 1140 b to 24 miles (38.6 kilometers) for MOA 2007 BLG 192Lb, compared to Europa’s estimated average of 18 miles (almost 29 kilometers). Estimated geyser activity went from just 17.6 pounds per second (about 8 kilograms/second) for Kepler 441b to 639,640 pounds/second (290,000 kilograms/second) for LHS 1140 b and 13.2 million pounds/second (six million kilograms/second) for Proxima Centauri b, compared to Europa at 4,400 pounds/second (2,000 kilograms/second).
“Since our models predict that oceans could be found relatively close to the surfaces of Proxima Centauri b and LHS 1140 b, and their rate of geyser activity could exceed Europa’s by hundreds to thousands of times, telescopes are most likely to detect geological activity on these planets,” said Quick, who is presenting this research December 12 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, California.
This activity could be seen when the exoplanet passes in front of its star. Certain colors of starlight could be dimmed or blocked by water vapor from the geysers. “Sporadic detections of water vapor in which the amount of water vapor detected varies with time, would suggest the presence of cryovolcanic eruptions,” said Quick. The water might contain other elements and compounds that could reveal if it can support life. Since elements and compounds absorb light at specific “signature” colors, analysis of the starlight would let scientists determine the geyser’s composition and evaluate the exoplanet’s habitability potential.
For planets like Proxima Centauri b that don’t cross their stars from our vantage point, geyser activity could be detected by powerful telescopes that are able to measure light that the exoplanet reflects while orbiting its star. Geysers would expel icy particles at the exoplanet’s surface which would cause the exoplanet to appear very bright and reflective.
The research was funded by NASA’s Habitable Worlds Program, the University of Washington’s Astrobiology Program, and the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, a member of the NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science coordination group.
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Last Updated Dec 13, 2023 EditorWilliam SteigerwaldContactWilliam Steigerwaldwilliam.a.steigerwald@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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