In just four days, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will come in contact with one of the most treacherous forces in our solar system – Jupiter’s legendary magnetic field.
Scientists aren’t entirely sure why the Jovian magnetic field is so powerful. One theory states that, deep within Jupiter, a layer of metallic hydrogen is crunched to such a high pressure that it serves as a sort of electrical conductor. When combined with the planet’s quick rotation, that conductor generates the magnetism. Scientists do know, however, that the magnetic field fires particles — electrons, protons, and ions — out from its surface at almost the speed of light, creating the most extreme radiation environment in the solar system.
NASA’s new video, Exploring Jupiter’s Magnetic Field, attempts to explain in simple terms why Jupiter’s magnetic field remains a mystery and how the agency hopes to use Juno to uncover it.
Magnetic fields themselves are no great mystery. They’ve been studied extensively and, since the mid-20th century, dynamo action — the convective motion of an electrically conducting fluid — has been accepted as their cause. But, even though we can map Earth’s magnetic field, we can’t peer through our planet’s crust to witness the dynamo process in action.
Jupiter, however, is a different beast. The gas giant doesn’t have a solid crust, meaning that if Juno can get close enough, the spacecraft can actually take readings and images of the magnetic field at its source.
Jupiter is our solar system’s biggest, oldest, grumpiest planet. In response, Juno has been titanium-armored to withstand the planet’s offenses. For 37 consecutive flybys, the little spacecraft will get closer to Jupiter than any man-made object before it, using sophisticated observational equipment to gather as much data as possible and send it back to Earth before the planet overpowers it.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.