December 2022

An artist's impression of the GJ 1002 system with its two planets

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the discovery of two exoplanets that are slightly larger than Earth in the GJ 1002 star system, almost 16 light-years away from Earth. A team of researchers used a combination of data collected by two spectrographs, ESPRESSO mounted on the VLT and CARMENES at the Calar Alto observatory, to study GJ 1002 and find the traces of two exoplanets around it. Both of them are within their system’s habitable zone where there could be conditions similar to those on Earth. The top image (Courtesy Alejandro Suárez Mascareño and Inés Bonet (IAC)) shows an artist’s impression of the GJ 1002 system with its two planets.

The galaxies RS13 and RS14 as they appeared in images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope and as they appear in the image captured by Webb

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the identification of a population of rare red spiral galaxies in the SMACS J0723.3-7327 galaxy cluster. A team of researchers used observations conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope to find details of these galaxies which are estimated to date back to when the universe was about two to three billion years old.

The unprecedented detail captured by Webb helps to make progress in understanding the processes taking place in galaxies of various ages and understand why some appear red. Finding several very old ones suggests that over 10 billion years ago, red galaxies were more common.

Infographic of the primordial galaxies observed with the James Webb Space Telescope

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Two articles that have yet to pass the peer-review phase report some results of observations of primordial galaxies conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope within the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program which has precisely the aim of studying the oldest and faintest galaxies. A team of astronomers used Webb’s NIRCam and NIRSpec instruments to determine the distances of four galaxies we see as they were less than 400 million years after the Big Bang using a spectroscopic analysis of their light.

The NASA's Orion spacecraft splashing down

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A little while ago, NASA’s Orion spacecraft completed its Artemis I mission by splashing down off the coast of the Baja California Peninsula, near Guadalupe Island. It blasted off on November 16 on the new SLS (Space Launch System), also NASA’s. Various ships were in the area to recover the Orion and every piece of hardware that can be recovered, such as the parachutes of the landing system, in order to collect as much data as possible on a critical phase such as the return to Earth.

The Hakuto-R Moon lander and the Lunar Flashlight nanosatellite blasting off atop a Falcon 9 rocket (Image SpaceX)

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A little while ago, ispace’s Hakuto-R Moon lander and NASA’s CubeSat-class nanosatellite Lunar Flashlight blasted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. After about 46 minutes, Hakuto-R successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage, and about 7 minutes later, Lunar Flashlight separated as well. Hakuto-R also carries two small rovers built by the United Arab Emirates and Japan. The route of what is called Hakuto-R Mission 1 will take about five months to get the lander to the Moon, where it will attempt a landing while the nanosatellite Lunar Flashlight will enter lunar orbit in about four months in search of water ice on its surface.