Space

Astrophysicist searches for ripples in space and time in new way

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 12 May 2025 16:16:18 +0000

Astrophysicist searches for ripples in space and time in new way Daniel William… Mon, 05/12/2025 - 10:16

Daniel Strain

Artist's depiction of supermassive black holes generating the universe's gravitational wave background. (Credit: Olena Shmahalo for NANOGrav)

ɫ��ֱ�� astrophysicist Jeremy Darling is pursuing a new way of measuring the universe’s gravitational wave background—the constant flow of waves that churn through the cosmos, warping the very fabric of space and time.

The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, could one day help to unlock some of the universe’s deepest mysteries, including how gravity works at its most fundamental level.

“There is a lot we can learn from getting these precise measurements of gravitational waves,” said Darling, professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences. “Different flavors of gravity could lead to lots of different kinds of gravitational waves.”

To understand how such waves work, it helps to picture Earth as a small buoy bobbing in a stormy ocean.

Darling explained that, throughout the history of the universe, countless supermassive black holes have engaged in a volatile dance: These behemoths spiral around each other faster and faster until they crash together. Scientists suspect that the resulting collisions are so powerful they, literally, generate ripples that spread out into the universe.

Jeremy Darling

This background noise washes over our planet all the time, although you’d never know it. The kinds of gravitational waves that Darling seeks to measure tend to be very slow, passing our planet over the course of years to decades.

In 2023, a team of scientists belonging to the NANOGrav collaboration achieved a coup by measuring that cosmic wave pool. The group recorded how the universe’s gravitational wave background stretched and squeezed spacetime, affecting the light coming to Earth from celestial objects known as pulsars, which act somewhat like cosmic clocks.

But those detailed measurements only captured how gravitational waves move in a single direction—akin to waves flowing directly toward and away from a shoreline. Darling, in contrast, wants to see how gravitational waves also move from side-to-side and up and down compared to Earth.

In his latest study, the astrophysicist got help from another class of celestial objects: quasars, or unusually bright, supermassive black holes sitting at the centers of galaxies. Darling searches for signals from gravitational waves by precisely measuring how quasars move compared to each other in the sky. He hasn’t spotted those signals yet, but that could change as more data become available.

“Gravitational waves operate in three dimensions,” Darling said. “They stretch and squeeze spacetime along our line of sight, but they also cause objects to appear to move back and forth in the sky.”

Galaxies in motion

The research drills down on the notoriously tricky task of studying how celestial objects move, a field known as astrometry.

Darling explained that quasars rest millions of light-years or more from Earth. As the glow from these objects speeds toward Earth, it doesn’t necessarily proceed in a straight line. Instead, passing gravitational waves will deflect that light, almost like a baseball pitcher throwing a curve ball.

Those quasars aren’t actually moving in space, but from Earth, they might look like they are—a sort of cosmic wiggling happening all around us.

“If you lived for millions of years, and you could actually observe these incredibly tiny motions, you’d see these quasars wiggling back and forth,” Darling said.

Or that’s the theory. In practice, scientists have struggled to observe those wiggles. In part, that’s because these motions are hard to observe, requiring a precision 10 times greater than it would take to watch a human fingernail growing on the moon from Earth. But our planet is also moving through space. Our planet orbits the sun at a speed of roughly 67,000 miles per hour, and the sun itself is hurtling through space at a blistering 850,000 miles per hour.

Detecting the signal from gravitational waves, in other words, requires disentangling Earth’s own motion from the apparent motion of quasars. To begin that process, Darling drew on data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. Since Gaia’s launch in 2013, its science team has released observations of more than a million quasars over about three years.

Beyond the story

Our space impact by the numbers:

19 ɫ��ֱ��-affiliated astronauts
No. 1 public university recipient of NASA research awards
Only academic research institute in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system

Follow ɫ��ֱ�� on LinkedIn

Darling took those observations, split the quasars into pairs, then carefully measured how those pairs moved relative to each other.

His findings aren’t detailed enough yet to prove that gravitational waves are making quasars wiggle. But, Darling said, it’s an important search—unraveling the physics of gravitational waves, for example, could help scientists understand how galaxies evolve in our universe and help them test fundamental assumptions about gravity.

The astrophysicist could get some help in that pursuit soon. In 2026, the Gaia team plans to release five-and-a-half more years of quasar observations, providing a new trove of data that might just reveal the secrets of the universe’s gravitational wave background.

“If we can see millions of quasars, then maybe we can find these signals buried in that very large dataset,” he said.

Massive ripples in the very fabric of the universe wash over Earth all the time, although you'd never notice. ɫ��ֱ��'s Jeremy Darling is trying a new search for these gravitational waves.

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CUriosity: A 50-year-old Soviet spacecraft will soon crash to Earth. Why, and where will it land?

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 07 May 2025 19:55:08 +0000

CUriosity: A 50-year-old Soviet spacecraft will soon crash to Earth. Why, and where will it land? Daniel William… Wed, 05/07/2025 - 13:55

Daniel Strain

In CUriosity, experts across the ɫ��ֱ�� campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, space weather experts Charles Constant, Marcin Pilinski and Shaylah Mutschler answer: “A 50-year-old Soviet spacecraft will soon crash to Earth. Why, and where will it land?”

An aurora seen from the International Space Station reveals the influence of the sun on Earth's atmosphere. (Credit: NASA/JSC/ESRS)

Get updates about the Venus lander

Later this week, a piece of Cold War space history is expected to return to Earth—although where it will land remains unclear.

Scientists estimate that Kosmos 482, a Soviet spacecraft that launched from Earth in 1972 with plans to land on Venus, will reenter Earth’s atmosphere sometime this weekend. The spacecraft, which was fortified to withstand the extreme conditions at the surface of Venus, will likely reach Earth’s surface intact.

Don’t panic: The odds that this relic will land in a populated area are very low, said Marcin Pilinski, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the ɫ��ֱ��.

The Kosmos 482 Venus lander. (Credit: NASA)

“It’s an infinitesimally small number,” Pilinski said. “It will very likely land in the ocean.”

He’s keeping a close eye. Pilinski is part of a team of scientists that has tracked Kosmos 482 as it orbited Earth. They include Shaylah Mutschler, director of the space weather division for the company Space Environment Technologies, and Charles Constant, a doctoral student at University College London.

The researchers say that the case of Kosmos 482 shows why it’s so important for scientists to get a handle on the space environment around Earth—understanding how spacecraft orbit the planet, interact with its wispy upper atmosphere and, in some cases, fall back down.

It’s a story five decades in the making: Kosmos 482 set out for Venus in March 1972, but, due to an unknown error with its rockets, never made it far. Today, it orbits the planet in what scientists call an “eccentric” orbit, similar in shape to a stretched-out rubber band. Because of Cold War secrecy, the researchers aren’t sure how big the spacecraft is. But estimates suggest it’s more than meter (almost 3.5 feet) wide and weighs about 495 kilograms (1,090 pounds).

“It was supposed to escape the sphere of influence of Earth,” said Mutschler, who earned her doctorate in aerospace engineering sciences from ɫ��ֱ�� in 2022. “It didn’t quite do enough to get out.”

Previously in CUriosity

CUriosity: Why, and how, do ants walk in a perfect line?

Or read more CUriosity stories here

And it’s been slowing down ever since. Mutschler explained that, as Kosmos 482 orbited Earth, it sliced through the upper parts of the atmosphere, experiencing drag much like an airplane flying against the wind. Scientists like her even track tiny changes in the way the spacecraft moves past Earth to improve their simulations, or models, of the conditions in that region of space.

But predicting where the spacecraft will crash is more difficult. In part, that’s because this environment, known as low-Earth orbit, can change a lot. During events called solar storms, for example, the sun releases intense bursts of energy that can cause our planet’s atmosphere to inflate like a balloon. Weather near Earth’s surface can also send disturbances upwards, creating waves and ripples in low-Earth orbit. Pilinski is part of a group at ɫ��ֱ�� called the Space Weather Technology Research and Education Center (SWx TREC). The center seeks to study the weather in space to better protect satellites in orbit around Earth.

“People who monitor asteroids to see if they will potentially impact Earth actually have an easier job,” Pilinski said. “Those objects would enter at a really steep angle. They’re not skimming part of the atmosphere for days or weeks like this spacecraft.”

Constant noted that understanding space weather is critical as companies across the globe launch more satellites into orbit.

“One collision could spell disaster for everyone else,” he said. “You’d get this cloud of debris flying around, causing other potential collisions—what we call a ‘Kessler event.’”

As for Kosmos 482, Mutschler said the researchers may be able to narrow down their estimates of where the spacecraft will crash about a day ahead of time.

“About a day out, we should know with a reasonable amount of certainty whether there’s going to be a solar storm affecting Earth,” Mutschler said, “or if the atmospheric conditions are going to continue to be quiet.”

In 1972, a Soviet lander known as Kosmos 482 launched for Venus. It never made it past Earth's gravity, and now the spacecraft is coming back.

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New Horizons collects first map of galaxy in important type of ultraviolet light

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:09:24 +0000

New Horizons collects first map of galaxy in important type of ultraviolet light Daniel William… Mon, 04/28/2025 - 09:09

Map of the universe's Lyman-alpha emissions collected by New Horizons looking away from the sun. (Credit: SwRI)

This story was adapted from a version published by the Southwest Research Institute. Read the original story here.

The NASA New Horizons spacecraft’s extensive observations of Lyman-alpha emissions have resulted in the first-ever map from the galaxy at this important ultraviolet wavelength, providing a new look at the galactic region surrounding our solar system.

“Understanding the Lyman-alpha background helps shed light on nearby galactic structures and processes,” said Randy Gladstone, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in ɫ��ֱ��, Colorado, and lead author of the study. “This research suggests that hot interstellar gas bubbles like the one our solar system is embedded within may actually be regions of enhanced hydrogen gas emissions at a wavelength called Lyman-alpha.”

The team published its findings April 21 in The Astronomical Journal. Michael Shull, professor emeritus in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at ɫ��ֱ��, served as a co-author of the study.

New Horizons launched in 2006, and, after passing by Pluto in 2015, the spacecraft traveled outside the dustiest regions of Earth’s solar system—a good vantage point for viewing Lyman-alpha emissions.

Lyman-alpha is a specific wavelength of ultraviolet light emitted and scattered by hydrogen atoms. It is especially useful to astronomers studying distant stars, galaxies and the interstellar medium, as it can help detect the composition, temperature and movement of these distant objects.

After New Horizon’s primary objectives at Pluto were completed, scientists used the Alice instrument to make broader and more frequent surveys of Lyman-alpha emissions as the spacecraft traveled farther from the sun. These surveys included an extensive set of scans in 2023 that mapped roughly 83% of the sky.

The results indicate a roughly uniform background Lyman-alpha sky brightness 10 times stronger than expected from previous estimates. Shull explained that this intense glow is likely produced an “interstellar greenhouse effect.”

“The strong Lyman-alpha emission line was scattered millions of times by the hydrogen gas, bouncing around space outside the solar system like interstellar ping-pong balls,” he said.

The study also found no evidence that a hydrogen wall, thought to surround the sun’s heliosphere, substantially contributes to the observed Lyman-alpha signal. Scientists had theorized that a wall of interstellar hydrogen atoms would accumulate as they encountered the edge of our heliosphere, the vast region of space dominated by the solar wind as it interacts with the interstellar medium. However, the New Horizons data saw nothing to indicate the wall is an important source of Lyman-alpha emission.

“The Lyman-alpha emission map produced by New Horizons represents one of our first glimpses of the interstellar gas clouds that surround the ‘Local Hot Bubble,’” Shull said. “It’s amazing to think that the hot bubble and interstellar structures were shaped by exploding stars just a few millions years ago.”

SwRI’s Alan Stern, a co-author of the new study and principal investigator for New Horizons, added:

“These are really landmark observations, in giving the first clear view of the sky surrounding the solar system at these wavelengths, both revealing new characteristics of that sky and refuting older ideas that the Alice New Horizons data just doesn’t support. … This Lyman-alpha map also provides a solid foundation for future investigations to learn even more.”

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in 2015, giving it an unprecedented opportunity to view the universe's Lyman-alpha emissions—an important kind of ultraviolet light that can reveal new information about stars, distant galaxies and more.

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Student-built rocket soars to 2nd place finish at 24,000 feet

Megan Maneval — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:53:11 +0000

Student-built rocket soars to 2nd place finish at 24,000 feet Megan Maneval Mon, 04/28/2025 - 08:53

Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences

The CU in Space Club's entry to the Argonia Cup rocket competition reached 24,000 feet and broke the sound barrier on its way to second place in the tournament.

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Planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann named new director of LASP

Megan Maneval — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 16:14:52 +0000

Planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann named new director of LASP Megan Maneval Wed, 04/23/2025 - 10:14

Ehlmann has been named the director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at ɫ��ֱ��. LASP, whose mission is to advance scientific discovery and inspire the next generation, is the university’s highest-budget research institute.

Bethany Ehlmann has been named the director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at ɫ��ֱ��. LASP's mission is to advance scientific discovery and inspire the next generation through forefront research, innovation and education.

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Research in space, helping people on Earth: BioServe marks 100th orbital launch

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 02:54:14 +0000

Research in space, helping people on Earth: BioServe marks 100th orbital launch Daniel William… Mon, 04/21/2025 - 20:54

Daniel Strain

The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida—marking BioServe's first launch into orbit. (Credit: NASA)

Louis Stodieck remembers the first time he saw a space shuttle blast off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In April 1991, Stodieck, an aerospace engineer, was the associate director of BioServe Space Technologies, a research center at the ɫ��ֱ��.

He had helped to design a set of test tubes that would, among other things, not spill the moment they reached space. Stodieck handed the test tubes off to a NASA crew, then watched as his work lifted away from a launchpad aboard the space shuttle Atlantis.

“I never get tired of launches,” said Stodieck, who served as BioServe’s director from 1999 to 2019 and is now its chief scientist. “The sound reaches you seconds after the launch because you’re a few miles away. When it hits you, it’s this low vibration, and you just feel it.”

BioServe founder Marvin Luttges in 1989. (Credit: BioServe)

The BioServe team poses for a photo in 1996. (Credit: BioServe)

A test tube designed for space by BioServe. (Credit: BioServe)

BioServe, which was founded in 1987, works with scientists at companies and research institutions around the world to conduct life science experiments in space.

Today, Stodieck and his colleagues are celebrating a new milestone: BioServe’s 100th launch into orbit.

On Monday, April 21, a SpaceX Dragon capsule lifted off from a similar pad in Florida en route to the International Space Station (ISS). It carried equipment belonging to three research projects, or “payloads,” developed by BioServe. They include several colonies containing billions of bacteria and algae.

“This launch is an amazing milestone,” said Stefanie Countryman, the current director of BioServe. “It exemplifies the hard work of everybody at BioServe, not just our engineers and researchers, but also our students.”

The center has come a long way since that first launch, NASA’s STS-37 mission, in 1991.

Researchers at the center have since sent a wide range of living things into orbit. They include single-celled organisms but also ants, silkworms, mice and an intrepid “spidernaut” named Nefertiti. (An 18-year-old student from Egypt proposed studying whether Nefertiti, a jumping spider, could adjust her hunting techniques in space, which she did). But BioServe has also kept one foot planted on the ground. The center’s research has generated new insights into human medical conditions like bone loss and cancer—and could even lead to facilities in the not-so-distant future that orbit Earth while making human stem cells.

“Space gives us an opportunity to look at organisms in new ways, including how they may express genes differently than they do on Earth,” Countryman said.

Single-celled astronauts

David Klaus, professor at the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, was a graduate student at ɫ��ֱ�� when BioServe’s first launch took off. From 1985 to 1990, he worked as a shuttle launch controller at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and in Mission Control in Houston. Klaus is set to retire this spring and sees the 100th BioServe launch as a “bookend” on his career.

In those early days, BioServe’s work largely revolved around one challenge of conducting science from hundreds of miles above Earth—open liquids and space don’t mix.

“It’s not like taking two test tubes in a lab on Earth and mixing them together,” Klaus said. “With our early payloads, we were really just trying to figure out how we could manipulate biological fluids in a space environment and get some initial experimental results.”

BioServe began as a 5-year grant from NASA under founder Marvin Luttges, a professor of aerospace engineering sciences at ɫ��ֱ��. Klaus explained that the center’s space test tubes include up to four sealed chambers. If you push down on a plunger, you can mix the fluids in those chambers one by one, all without exposing them to the air. BioServe has since sent thousands of its test tubes into space, and the basic design remains largely the same.

The team’s early research also revealed something surprising: BioServe scientists discovered that bacteria tend to grow better in space than they do on Earth—perhaps because they’re not being squished down by gravity. A handful of experiments showed that such bacteria could even be transformed into living factories for making anti-cancer drugs.

Astronaut Christina Koch uses a microscope supplied by BioServe aboard the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

A lab 250 miles up

In the decades that followed, BioServe’s scientific equipment wound up on NASA’s four space shuttles, the Russian space station Mir and, eventually, the ISS, which entered into orbit in 1998.

Today, astronauts on the ISS can peer through a microscope flight certified and launched by BioServe and grow cell cultures in four incubators called Space Automated Bioproduct Lab (SABL) 1, 2, 3 and 4. BioServe even supplied the refrigerator where humans on the ISS store their food. On the ground, the center runs a mission operation and control center on the ɫ��ֱ�� campus. There, BioServe staff talk to astronauts in real time on a giant screen.

“We’re replicating the sorts of biological labs that you can find at ɫ��ֱ�� in space,” said Tobias Niederwieser, a research associate at BioServe.

Astronaut Alexander Gerst loads biological cultures into a SABL incubator on the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

Adeline Loesch assembles space "petri dishes" containing biological organisms in a lab on the ɫ��ֱ�� campus. (Credit: Adeline Loesch)

The center has also collaborated with dozens of space agencies, universities and private companies over its history. On the current launch, for example, a company called Sophie’s Bionutrients based in the Netherlands contracted with the center to examine how algae produce proteins in space—which the company hopes will lead to new kinds of algae-based meat substitutes.

The center’s most lasting contribution to science, however, may be its students. Over the years, hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students at ɫ��ֱ�� have worked for BioServe. Many have gone on to jobs at NASA and private space companies.

They include Adeline Loesch, a senior studying atmospheric and oceanic sciences at ɫ��ֱ��. She started working at BioServe between her freshman and sophomore years. These days, she does a little bit of everything for the center: She helps to build the hardware for experiments, assembles them for flight and sits in the operations center as astronauts carry out the research.

In the fall, Loesch will start work in spacecraft and satellite flight operations for Lockheed Martin in Colorado.

“My favorite is watching the projects come full circle during the operations,” Loesch said. “Watching the research being done in real time by astronauts in space is the coolest thing ever.”

Making humans healthier from space

In the end, BioServe’s research in space doesn’t stay in space.

Roughly 24 years ago, for example, Stodieck and his colleagues designed a specialized habitat for mice to live on the ISS. His team’s research has revealed new clues to why mammals lose bone mass when they leave Earth. Those insights, in turn, helped to inspire new kinds of medications for osteoporosis in people.

Niederwieser, meanwhile, is tackling what may be an even more ambitious goal—he and his colleagues are growing human hematopoietic stem cells in space. Doctors often transplant these cells into people to treat cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.

But they’re also tricky and expensive to make on Earth. In a few early experiments, Niederwieser and his colleagues discovered that stem cells, like bacteria, may grow more freely in space. Later this year, his team plans to transport a facility for producing stem cells en masse to the ISS.

That could lead to a new vision for space—one in which stations in orbit around Earth produce various treatments for human illnesses, then send them back to patients on the ground.

“Humans have been on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years and have evolved with only one gravity,” Stodieck said. “It’s really been a privilege to understand how organisms work in another environment.”

Stodieck didn’t travel to Florida for Monday’s launch, but Klaus was there to see SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket roar off the launchpad. Before he left, he was feeling wistful about seeing his old stomping grounds again.

“I'm looking forward to going down there and reminiscing a little bit,” Klaus said. “I’ll drive around and look at the base—a little 40-year flashback to where my career started.”

Beyond the story

Our space impact by the numbers:

19 ɫ��ֱ��-affiliated astronauts
No. 1 public university recipient of NASA research awards
Only academic research institute in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system

Follow ɫ��ֱ�� on LinkedIn

For nearly 40 years, researchers at BioServe Space Technologies at ɫ��ֱ�� have conducted life science experiments in space—from studying the behavior of spiders in microgravity to producing human stem cells on the International Space Station.

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Did it rain or snow on ancient Mars? New study suggests it did

Daniel William Strain — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 18:28:26 +0000

Did it rain or snow on ancient Mars? New study suggests it did Daniel William… Mon, 04/21/2025 - 12:28

Daniel Strain

Artist's depiction of water rushing into Mars' Jezero Crater, which billions of years ago was the site of a delta. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Visit ancient Mars—a surprisingly temperate planet where snow or rain falls from the sky, and rivers rush down valleys to feed hundreds of lakes.

A new study from geologists at the ɫ��ֱ�� paints this picture of a Red Planet that was relatively warm and wet, much different than the frigid wasteland we know today. The team’s findings suggest that heavy precipitation likely fed many networks of valleys and channels that shaped the Martian surface billions of years ago—adding new evidence to a long-running debate in planetary science.

The researchers, led by Amanda Steckel, who earned her doctorate in geological sciences at ɫ��ֱ�� in 2024, published their findings April 21 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

“You could pull up Google Earth images of places like Utah, zoom out, and you’d see the similarities to Mars,” said Steckel, now at the California Institute of Technology.

Most scientists today agree that at least some water existed on the surface of Mars during the Noachian epoch, roughly 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago.

But where that water came from has long been a mystery. Some researchers say that ancient Mars wasn’t ever warm and wet, but always cold and dry. At the time, the solar system’s young sun was only about 75% as bright as it is today. Sprawling ice caps may have covered the highlands around the Martian equator, occasionally melting for short periods of time.

In the new research, Steckel and her colleagues set out to investigate the warm-and-wet versus cold-and-dry theories of Mars’ past climate. The team drew on computer simulations to explore how water may have shaped the surface of Mars billions of years ago. They found that precipitation from snow or rain likely formed the patterns of valleys and headwaters that still exist on Mars today.

“It’s very hard to make any kind of conclusive statement,” Steckel said. “But we see these valleys beginning at a large range of elevations. It’s hard to explain that with just ice.”

A detailed map of the topography of Mars at one region near its equator taken by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. (Credit: NASA)

A tale of two red planets

Satellite images of Mars today still reveal the fingerprints of water on the planet.

Around the equator, for example, vast networks of channels spread from Martian highlands, branching like trees and emptying into lakes and even, possibly, an ocean. NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021, is currently exploring Jezero Crater, the site of one such ancient lake. During the Noachian, a powerful river emptied into this region, depositing a delta on top of the crater floor.

This image from NASA's Perseverance Rover reveals sandstone at the base of Jezero Crater. Scientists believe this feature was created by water carrying fine grains of rock into the crater. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“You’d need meters deep of flowing water to deposit those kinds of boulders,” said Brian Hynek, senior author of the study and a scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at ɫ��ֱ��.

To study that ancient past, he and Steckel, who now serves on the Perseverance science team, created, essentially, a digital version of a portion of Mars.

The team drew on a computer simulation, or model, originally developed for Earth studies by study co-author Gregory Tucker, a professor at the Department of Geological Sciences at ɫ��ֱ��. Matthew Rossi, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at ɫ��ֱ��, also served as a co-author.

The researchers used the software to model the evolution of the landscape on synthetic terrain that resembles Mars close to its equator. In some cases, the group added water to that terrain from falling precipitation. In other cases, the researchers included melting ice caps. Then, in the simulation, they let the water flow for tens to hundreds of thousands of years.

The researchers examined the patterns that formed as a result and, specifically, where the headwaters feeding Mars’ branching valleys emerged. The scenarios produced very different planets: In the case of melting ice caps, those valley heads formed largely at high elevations, roughly around the edge of where the ancient ice sat. In the precipitation examples, Martian headwaters were much more widespread, forming at elevations ranging from below the planet’s average surface to more than 11,000 feet high.

“Water from these ice caps starts to form valleys only around a narrow band of elevations,” Steckel said. “Whereas if you have distributed precipitation, you can have valley heads forming everywhere.”

The team then compared those predictions to actual data from Mars taken by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey spacecrafts. The simulations that included precipitation lined up more closely with the real Red Planet.

The researchers are quick to point out that the results aren’t the final word on Mars’ ancient climate—in particular, how the planet managed to stay warm enough to support snow or rain still isn’t clear. But Hynek said the study provides scientists with new insights into the history of another planet: our own.

“Once the erosion from flowing water stopped, Mars almost got frozen in time and probably still looks a lot like Earth did 3.5 billion years ago,” he said.

A new study from ɫ��ֱ�� geologists weighs in on a long-running debate about Mars: Billions of years ago, was the Red Planet warm and wet or cold and dry?

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ɫ��ֱ�� leading 10-university uncrewed aerial systems communications project

Megan Maneval — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 13:15:14 +0000

ɫ��ֱ�� leading 10-university uncrewed aerial systems communications project Megan Maneval Wed, 04/16/2025 - 07:15

Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Eric Frew is heading an $8 million project to improve drone communications in anticipation of a future when autonomous aircraft regularly whizz overhead for everything from product deliveries to emergency response.

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Aircrafts of the future: Boosting aerodynamic performance by engineered surface vibrations

Megan Maneval — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 20:33:09 +0000

Aircrafts of the future: Boosting aerodynamic performance by engineered surface vibrations Megan Maneval Thu, 04/03/2025 - 14:33

Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences

Mahmoud Hussein is leading a $7.5 million research grant that is “probably the most radical conceptual advancement for airplanes since the replacement of propellers with jets.”

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Webb telescope captures images, insight from one of Milky Way’s most extreme environments

Daniel William Strain — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 20:44:04 +0000

Webb telescope captures images, insight from one of Milky Way’s most extreme environments Daniel William… Wed, 04/02/2025 - 14:44

Daniel Strain

An image of the Milky Way Galaxy captured by the MeerKAT radio telescope, with an inset showing a detailed image of Sagittarius C taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford)

Sagittarius C is one of the most extreme environments in the Milky Way Galaxy. This cloudy region of space sits about 200 light-years from the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Here, a massive and dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust has collapsed on itself over millions of years to form thousands of new stars.

In a new study, a team of scientists used observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study Sagittarius C in unprecedented detail. The research was led by ɫ��ֱ�� astrophysicist John Bally, Samuel Crowe at the University of Virginia, Rubén Fedriani at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada and their colleagues

The findings could help solve a long-running mystery about the innermost stretches of the galaxy, or what scientists call the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ): The region hosts high densities of interstellar gas. So why are fewer new stars born here than scientists once predicted?

The researchers discovered that powerful magnetic field lines seem to be threading through Sagittarius C, forming long and bright filaments of hot hydrogen gas that look a little like spaghetti noodles—a phenomenon that could slow down the pace of star formation in the surrounding gas.

“It’s in a part of the galaxy with the highest density of stars and massive, dense clouds of hydrogen, helium and organic molecules” said Bally, professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at ɫ��ֱ��. “It’s one of the closest regions we know of that has extreme conditions similar to those in the young universe.”

He and his colleagues published their findings April 2 in The Astrophysical Journal. The research is part of an observation campaign proposed and led by Crowe, a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Virginia who was recently named a Rhodes Scholar.

And, Crowe noted, the Webb telescope’s startling images show Sagittarius C as it’s never been seen before.

“Because of these magnetic fields, Sagittarius C has a fundamentally different shape, a different look than any other star forming region in the galaxy away from the galactic center,” Crowe said.

This image of Sagittarius C from the Webb telescope reveals several bands of plasma, which seem to have been formed by strong magnetic fields. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford)

Stellar nurseries

The research sheds light on the violent births and deaths of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Stars tend to form within what scientists call “molecular clouds,” or regions of space containing dense clouds of gas and dust. The closest such stellar nursery to Earth lies in the Orion Nebula, just below Orion’s belt. There, molecular clouds have collapsed over millions of years, forming a cluster of new stars.

Such active sites of star formation also spell their own demise. As new stars grow, they begin to emit vast amounts of radiation into space. That radiation, in turn, blows away the surrounding cloud, stripping the region of the matter it needs to build more new stars.

“Even the sun, we think, formed in a massive cluster like this,” Bally said. “Over billions of years, all of our sibling stars have drifted away.”

In a separate study published today in the same journal, Crowe and his colleagues, including Bally, dove into the growing “protostars” forming in Sagittarius. Their data reveal a detailed picture of how these young stars are ejecting radiation and blowing away the gas and dust around them.

Magnetic fields

In the study led by Bally, the researchers explored Sagittarius C’s unusual appearance. Bally explained that while the Orion Nebula looks mostly smooth, Sagittarius C is anything but. Weaving in and out of this region are dozens of bright filaments, some several light-years long. These filaments are made up of plasma, a hot gas of charged particles.

“We were definitely not expecting those filaments,” said Rubén Fedriani, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain. “It was a completely serendipitous discovery.”

Bally noted that the secret to Sagittarius C’s filaments, and the nature of its star formation, likely comes down to magnetic fields.

A supermassive black hole with a mass about four million times greater than our sun sits at the center of the galaxy. The motion of gas swirling around this behemoth can stretch and amplify the surrounding magnetic fields. Those fields, in turn, shape the plasma in Sagittarius C.

Bally suspects that the Orion Nebula looks much smoother because it resides within a much weaker magnetic environment.

Scientists, he added, have long known that the galaxy’s innermost regions are an important birthplace for new stars. But some calculations have suggested that the region should be producing a lot more young stars than observed. In the CMZ, magnetic forces may be strong enough to resist the gravitational collapse of molecular clouds, limiting the rate of new star formation.

Regardless, Sagittarius C’s own time may be drawing to a close. The region’s stars have blown away much of its molecular cloud already, and that nursery could disappear entirely in a few hundred thousand years.

“It’s almost the end of the story,” Bally said.

Beyond the story

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In new images, scientists have gotten the closest look yet at Sagittarius C—a “stellar nursery” where clouds of gas and dust have collapsed to form thousands of new stars.

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