May 2021

The Chinese Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft blasting off (Photo courtesy Xinhua/Ju Zhenhua)

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A few hours ago the Chinese Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft docked to the Tianhe core module of the Chinese space station successfully completing an automated maneuver. Tianzhou-2 was launched a few hours earlier atop a Long March-7 Y3 rocket from the Wenchang site. This is the first space cargo spacecraft launched towards the new Chinese space station, carrying propellant and supplies for the taikonauts, as the Chinese call their astronauts, who will start working on the station starting in mid-June, according to plan.

Deep field image (Image Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Acknowledgments: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab))

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29 articles report various aspects of the results of a major cosmological research on the largest sample of galaxies – 226 million of them – ever observed to produce the most accurate measurements of the composition and growth of the universe. More than 400 scientists from the DES (Dark Energy Survey) Collaboration used images captured by the Dark Energy Camera in the first three years of the program, which started in 2013, to obtain results. The goal is to improve our knowledge of the universe, in particular, the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

Occator Crater on the dwarf planet Ceres and the structure of the ammonium molecule (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” reports a study of the origin of the ammoniated phyllosilicates present on the dwarf planet Ceres. A team of researchers conducted lab experiments based on the simulation of the Ceres environment. The results confirm the hypothesis that this dwarf planet formed in an area of ​​the solar system where ammonia ice is stable. However, they can’t rule out that it formed in the asteroid belt.

The distribution of the 36 dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the discovery of 36 dwarf galaxies that are simultaneously showing signs of the start of remarkable star-forming activity. A team of researchers examined a group of dwarf galaxies observed during the ANGST survey noting a simultaneous acceleration in star-forming activity despite the fact that they’re separated even by several million light-years. This is a phenomenon that has no explanation in current models of galaxy evolution.

The likely galaxies where the origins of fast radio bursts cataloged as FRB 190714 (top) and FRB 180924 (bottom) was located

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An article to be published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the location of the origin of eight fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected between 2017 and 2020. A team of researchers coordinated by the University of California at Santa Cruz used the Hubble Space Telescope to accomplish this task by applying a method already used to pinpoint the origin of other cosmic phenomena such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. This result offers new information on an extremely energetic phenomenon such as fast radio bursts, which emit an amount of energy in a millisecond comparable to the amount the Sun emits in a year. The results of this study are compatible with the theory that links them to magnetars.