Robotic Flyers: The Future of Space Exploration?
By: David Dickinson | August 18, 2015

Flying robot explorers could one day grace the skies of other worlds. Quadcopters, the four-propeller drones that have become a familiar sight in terrestrial skies, may be the next big thing in space exploration. Engineers based at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on the Florida Space Coast are working on the next generation of robotic scouts to take planetary exploration airborne.

The facility, known as Swamp Works, is designing small flying probes which will be capable of reaching hard-to-access spots, such as crater walls or crevasses.
(more)

Watching Starbirth in Real Time
By: Monica Young
April 7, 2015

A team of astronomers took the long view (18 years long, in fact) and caught a star in the act of forming.

Astronomers must often piece together patchwork quilts of observations to learn the history of the universe. Stars and galaxies usually evolve over time scales much longer than human lives, so rather than watch individual stars or galaxies develop, observers sew together images of many objects at different stages to tell their life story.

But every now and then, a star tells its own story.

In a star-forming region dubbed W75N(B), Carlos Carrasco-González (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and his colleagues watched what will one day be a massive and luminous B star evolve over a period of 18 years.

As the protostar grew, drawing in gas from its surroundings, it threw off a small fraction of those particles in a protostellar wind. Back in 1996, observations showed this wind streaming outward in all directions. But 18 years later, the team reported in the April 3rd Science, the wind had transformed, flowing faster and farther along the star’s poles. Seen in real-time, the wind’s changing shape reveals how the forming star responds to its surroundings.

(more)

from Space.com
Jupiter's Moon Europa May Have Plate Tectonics Just Like Earth
By Mike Wall, Senior Writer | September 08, 2014 11:30am ET

Scientists have found evidence of an active plate tectonics system within the ice shell of Jupiter's moon Europa. Earth has long been thought to be the only solar system body with plate tectonics.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk


Jupiter's icy moon Europa, regarded as perhaps the solar system's best bet to host alien life, keeps getting more and more interesting.

Big slabs of ice are sliding over and under each other within Europa's ice shell, a new study suggests. The Jovian satellite may thus be the only solar system body besides Earth to possess a system of plate tectonics.
(more)

Japan to Test Space Junk Cleanup Tether Soon
By Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer Space.com

January 17, 2014 06:30am ET


Japanese scientists are getting ready to launch a test of a space junk-cleaning tether, according to press reports.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) researchers are developing an electrodynamic tether designed to generate electricity that will slow down space-based debris, according to a report from Agence France Presse.

The slowed-down space junk will fall into lower and lower orbits until burning up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere.
(more)

The strange location of Io’s volcanoes leaves astronomers puzzled

Where are Io’s volcanoes?

By Staff, The Space Reporter
Saturday, April 06, 2013

Proving that the galaxy never ceases to surprise us, a study published in January’s Earth and Planetary Science Letters claims that hundreds of volcanoes on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io have somehow shifted.

Conducted by NASA and the ESA, the study was spearheaded by Christopher Hamilton, who serves as an Earth and planetary scientist for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Having studied how patterns of volcanoes aid in the exploration of a planet or moon’s internal design, Hamilton sought to apply the same idea to Io by mapping the moon’s surface with data from the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft. The results were unexpected.

“Our analysis supports the prevailing view that most of the heat is generated in the asthenosphere, but we found that volcanic activity is located 30 to 60 degrees East from where we expect it to be,” said Hamilton.
(more)