Science

SpaceX rocket is being prepared for flight this week to deliver a Korean expedition to the moon.

South Korea and SpaceX are preparing to launch a spacecraft this week on a long voyage that will eventually take it around the moon.

The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on the back of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday night.

After breaking free of Earth’s gravity, the KPLO is scheduled to enter a low-altitude orbit around the moon. Fueling and testing have been completed by South Korean engineers who went to the United States for the flight.

According to Space.org, Eunhyeuk Kim, a KPLO project scientist at the Korean Aerospace Research Institute, stated, “We hope to build key technologies for both space exploration and scientific study.”

The launch is slated for Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. EDT.

The KPLO will eventually enter a polar orbit 62 miles above the lunar surface and conduct observations for at least a year.

The project’s main goals are to detect the magnetic force above the lunar surface and to look into lunar resources such water ice, uranium, helium-3, silicon, and aluminium.

The $180 million mission will follow NASA’s CAPSTONE spacecraft, which launched last month, on a low-energy, fuel-efficient lunar course.

The expedition will also produce a topographic map, which will aid scientists on Earth in selecting future moon landing locations. NASA’s Artemis programme hopes to return humans to the moon’s surface by 2024.

The KPLO mission is the first phase in South Korea’s ambitious lunar exploration programme, which aims to deploy a robotic lander on the moon by 2030. In addition, the nation is preparing an asteroid sample-return mission.

Asteroids that came from the solar system’s outskirts more than 4.5 billion kilometres distant may have carried water and organic materials to the ancient Earth, according to a team of Japanese researchers.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and colleagues published the theory in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy based on a study of samples from the Ryugu asteroid acquired by the Hayabusa2 space mission.

It is still unknown how the Earth, which was formed almost completely of molten lava, came to be covered with water.

“It is plausible that small celestial bodies transported substances that led to water and life on Earth,” Motoo Ito, senior researcher of geomaterials science at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, stated.

Hayabusa2’s six-year mission brought more than 5.4 kilos of surface debris to Earth from the Ryugu asteroid, situated over 300 million kilometres distant, in December 2020.

While Ryugu particles had a near chemical match to Earth’s water, there were some minor discrepancies that led experts to speculate that Earth may have gotten its water from sources other than asteroids.

An analysis of eight particles from the Ryugu asteroid, totaling approximately 59 milligrammes, discovered organic matter and water not in liquid form, but a hydroxyl group consisting of one oxygen atom bonded to one hydrogen atom, with a composition similar to that of water found in cosmic dust and comets.

They were thought to have survived hard environmental changes after leaving the outer solar system, where water and organic matter are prevalent, since they were protected by a “cradle” of phyllosilicates.

Organic regions made mostly of aliphatic hydrocarbons were also discovered among the comparatively coarse-grained phyllosilicates. The surrounding coarse grains, which are more resistant to heat, may have prevented the environment from altering water and organic materials.

Hayabusa2 launched in 2014 and arrived in June 2018 over Ryugu after travelling 3.2 billion kilometres in an elliptical orbit around the Sun for more than three years.

The probe returned to the asteroid again the following year, gathering the first-ever asteroid subsurface samples.

Researchers earlier discovered that Ryugu, produced from an outer solar system parent body, migrated to the inner solar system and that its particles include amino acids – organic chemicals thought to be the “source of life.”

Astronomers investigating the leftovers of a supernova photographed using NASA telescopes have discovered evidence that might assist establish the star’s end chronology. The supernova remnant, known as SNR 0519-69.0, is the result of a white dwarf star explosion.

After reaching critical mass, the star exploded in a thermonuclear explosion, according to NASA’s Chandra Ray Observatory. Stars often do this by absorbing mass from a companion star or merging with another dwarf star. This type of supernova is known as a Type Ia, and scientists use it for anything from analysing thermonuclear explosions to determining the distance to galaxies billions of light-years distant.

SNR 0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short, is a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a tiny galaxy around 160,000 light years from Earth. This composite image was created using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Low, medium, and high energy X-rays from the supernova remnant are portrayed in green, blue, and purple, with these colours overlapping to seem white in certain locations. The red border of the remnant and the white stars around the remnant are from optical data.

Scientists “rewinded” the star development and explosion that culminated in SNR 0519 using data from Chandra, Hubble, and NASA’s defunct Spitzer Space Telescope. They discovered when the star burst and learnt about its surroundings. Their findings were reported in The Astrophysical Journal.

They analysed Hubble photos of SNR 0519 taken in 2010, 2011, and 2020 to determine the velocity of the particles in the blast waves caused by the explosions. According to their estimations, it varies between 6 and 9 million kilometres per hour. If the speed was closer to the high end of that estimate, the light from the explosion would have reached Earth around 670 years ago.

However, it seems more probable that the material has slowed down since the star’s outburst, which occurred 670 years ago. The researchers discovered that the brightest spots in X-ray pictures contain the slowest-moving particles. They also discovered that the fastest-moving substance had no X-ray emission.

The 29th of June was the shortest day in recorded history, thanks to a ‘wobble’ in the Earth’s spin that shaved off 1.59 milliseconds.

This summer, the Earth had its shortest day ever, due to a wobble in its axis that allowed it to complete a single spin in a fraction of a second less than 24 hours.

According to the website timeanddate.com, June 29 was 1.59 milliseconds shorter than 86,400 seconds, or exactly 24 hours.

In recent decades, the Earth has slowed down, resulting in somewhat longer days. However, in recent years, this trend has reversed, and the days have become increasingly shorter.

If the Earth continues to speed up, it may be necessary to remove a second from atomic clocks for the first time.
The Earth is not without flaws.

The Earth frequently wobbles – the spinning that we perceive as night and day does not always occur exactly in line with its axis, the line connecting the North and South Poles.

This is due to the fact that it is not an exact sphere.

The equator has a bulge, while the poles are somewhat squashed, indicating that Earth is slightly elliptical.

Other forces, like as ocean tides and moon gravity, can also interfere with the spinning.

The “Chandler sway”

Leonid Zotov, a mathematics professor, argues that the planet is rotating faster due to a periodic movement known as the “Chandler wobble.”

The wobble was discovered in the late 1880s by astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler, who noted the poles wobbling during a 14-month period.

According to the Telegraph, the wobble began to diminish in the early 2000s, hitting historic lows in 2017.

And, according to Zotov, “it vanished” between 2017 and 2020.

According to timeanddate.com, Zotov will propose this concept at the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society. It is yet to be peer-reviewed.

In everyday life, the Earth wobbles barely alter. However, they must be monitored in order for the atomic clock to stay accurate enough to properly synchronise GPS and earth-observing satellites.