September 2019

Artist's concept of K2-18b with its star in the background (Image ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” reports the detection of water vapor in the exoplanet K2-18b’s atmosphere mainly thanks to the Hubble space telescope. This exoplanet is in ​​its system’s habitable zone and this made it interesting since this super-Earth was discovered in 2015. It’s the first detection of water vapor in an exoplanet of that type but it’s still too soon to assess its habitability potential because the detections are not precise enough to define the percentages of other molecules such as hydrogen and helium and to understand if there are clouds.

The afterglow of the event GW170817 in the inset (Image courtesy Wen-fai Fong/Northwestern University)

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An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of the search for the afterglow of the merger between two neutron stars identified two years ago and cataloged as GW170817. It made history because it’s the first event of that type identified and was observed at both gravitational waves and electromagnetic waves. A team of researchers led by Wen-fai Fong of Northwestern University used the Hubble space telescope to detect the now very dim afterglow, the residual radiation after months of strong emissions.

The galaxy NGC 6946 and its ULXs (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports a study on some ultraluminous X-ray sources observed in the galaxy NGC 6946. A team of researchers led by Hannah Earnshaw, a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech, used observations carried out with NASA’s NuSTAR space telescope of. In particular, their interest focused on one of the sources, cataloged as ULX-4, also observed with ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope but after ten days NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory found no more traces of it. Such an event usually has a long duration so it could have been generated by a black hole or a neutron star on nearby debris.

The Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft moving away from the International Space Station (Image NASA TV)

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A few hours ago the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft landed without problems in Kazakhstan. A few hours earlier it departed the International Space Station, where it arrived on August 27. The return to Earth ends a test mission that was carried out without cosmonauts aboard a spacecraft generally used for transporting human beings. In this case, the Skybot F-850 robot, nicknamed Fedor, was on board.

The landing on the Moon of the Indian Vikram lander and Pragyan rover didn’t succeed

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The Indian Chandrayaan 2 mission’s Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover, launched on 22 July, attempted a Moon landing but something went wrong and the contact was lost at an altitude of about 2.1 kilometers. The Indian space agency ISRO’s engineers are analyzing the data collected, but probably there was some problem during the braking phase with loss of attitude and subsequent crash of the vehicles.