NASA’s Europa Clipper, shown in this illustration updated in December 2020, will fly around Jupiter on an elliptical path, diving close to its moon Europa on each flyby to collect data. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA‘S Europe The Clipper mission aims to solve problems with transistor radiation as it prepares to launch an expedition to Jupiter to … Read more
This article was originally published on The conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com Expert Voices: Opinion Pieces and Insights. Alan Cooper is a professor at Charles Sturt University Pavle Arsenovic is a senior scientist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Science (BOKU). The remarkable aurora borealis in early May this year … Read more
Scientists may have solved a long-standing mystery surrounding the ice giant Uranus and its faint radiation belts. It’s possible that the belts’ faintness is related to the planet’s oddly tilted and lopsided magnetic field, which could be causing “traffic jams” for particles racing across the world. The mystery dates back to Voyager 2’s visit to … Read more
Credit: Harrison Haines from Pexels The remarkable aurora in early May of this year showed the power that solar storms can emit as radiation, but every now and then the sun does something much more destructive. These explosions of protons, which come directly from the sun’s surface and are known as “solar particle events,” can … Read more
The remarkable aurora in early May of this year showed the power that solar storms can emit as radiation, but every now and then the sun does something much more destructive. These explosions of protons, fired directly from the sun’s surface and shooting out into space like a searchlight, are known as “solar particle events.” … Read more
A future civilization on Mars could be accompanied by a very special and resilient plant. A type of moss found in the desert – called Syntrichia caninervis—may be able to survive and thrive in the harsh conditions of Mars, according to a new paper in the journal Mars The innovation. This moss can grow in … Read more
Astronauts on a future mission to Mars may not make it all the way to the Red Planet and back without experiencing kidney failure, new research shows. Although not usually considered one of the biggest dangers of space travel, traveling as far as Mars could change the structure and function of astronauts’ kidneys, leading to … Read more
The solar storms that gave rise to the hugely impressive auroras seen around the world on May 10 also dealt Mars a blow, creating auroras over the Red Planet and showering its surface with harmful radiation. The primary source of the solar storms was an active region, AR3664which was an intense knot of magnetic flux … Read more