June 2019

Three planets, one smaller than the Earth, discovered in the system of the red dwarf L 98-59

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An article published in “The Astronomical Journal” reports the discovery of three planets that orbit the star L 98-59, a red dwarf about 35 light-years from Earth. A team of researchers led by Veselin Kostov of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center used observations from the TESS space telescope to discover the traces of the three exoplanets. The analysis showed that these are two possible super-Earths and the smallest planet discovered so far thanks to TESS, about 80% of the Earth. The three exoplanets are too close to their star to be in ​​their system’s habitable zone, instead they are in the area called “Venus zone”, where a planet’s atmosphere can heat up in a runaway greenhouse effect.

Origin of a non-repeating fast radio burst pinpointed

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An article published in the journal “Science” reports the localization of the point of origin of a non-repeating fast radio burst. A team of researchers led by Keith Bannister of CSIRO (Australia’s Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization) discovered the fast radio burst cataloged as FRB 180924 with the ASKAP radio telescope and then proceeded using the Keck, Gemini South and VLT telescopes to pinpoint its origin in a galaxy about 3.6 billion light years away. Before this result, only the origin of a repeating fast radio burst was pinpointed.

Titan northern hemisphere (Image NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute)

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At the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference being held in Bellevue, Washington, Morgan Cable of NASA’s JPL presented the results of a study conducted with other researchers on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. This team recreated in lab some conditions existing in the lakes of methane and other hydrocarbons of Titan, discovering that a co-crystal of solid acetylene and butane could be produced with the formation of ring-shaped deposits around those lakes similarly to salt deposits which are produced when water evaporates in the Earth’s seas. Those co-crystals could be used by exotic life forms in a way similar to carbon dioxide on Earth.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket blasting off in its Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission (Photo NASA/Joel Kowsky)

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A few hours ago SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral on a mission involving the launch of various satellites in low and medium Earth orbit. The most powerful rocket in business launched satellites on behalf of NASA, the US Air Force and other entities, incuding CubeSat-class nanosatellites built by students. The mission required four burns for the Falcon Heavy rocket’s upper stage to place them in the various orbits required. The mass of the payloads to be taken into orbit was relatively small – around 3,700 kg – but the second stage needed a lot of fuel to carry out all the maneuvers required in this mission, therefore the initial thrust of the Falcon Heavy was needed.