Articles in 2020

Amino acid glycine is shown here to form in the laboratory at temperatures of <15 K without the need for energetic processing (such as ultraviolet irradiation or particle bombardment). The implication is that amino acids could potentially form at the very earliest stages of star formation and persist until planetary systems are established.

Govind Swarup was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy and the driving force behind two innovative Indian radio telescopes. He contributed significantly to building up research institutions and promoting science education and training programs in the country.

The change in growth of the lunar regolith thickness around 3.5 Gyr ago, a consequence of a change in population of the impactor bodies from planetesimals to asteroids, indicates that the instability of giant planets happened early.

Based on laboratory experiments and predictions, the Europa Clipper mission is expected to detect the surface ices on the night side of Jupiter’s moon Europa glowing in the dark, with an intensity that can be used to determine their composition.

The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment CubeSat mission aims to observe atmospheric escape from a dozen or more exoplanets by monitoring them in the near-ultraviolet, explains Principal Investigator Kevin France.

High-performance scientific satellites are currently the exclusive domain of government-funded agencies. The team behind the Twinkle Space Mission is developing a new class of small and sustainable science satellites that leverages recent innovations in the commercial space sector.

Small satellites are revolutionizing the way we access space for commerce and science, including astronomy and planetary science. Yet, like many breakthrough technologies, it has a double-edge.

Earth’s exosphere is set to become increasingly crowded, with tens of thousands of commercial telecommunication satellites planned in the next few years. We need to ensure that technological and socio-economic advancements will not imperil scientific progress and humanity’s access to dark skies.

The commercial development of small satellites provides a unique opportunity to the astronomical community to overcome terrestrial limitations such as geography, atmosphere and planetary motion at a fraction of the cost of traditional space-based astronomy missions.

Recently, nanosatellite capabilities, driven by commercial and scientific innovation, have led to the development of high-performance satellite payloads and subsystems. This article reflects on the history, current state and future of the field.

In the context of near-Earth space becoming increasingly privatized and crowded due to the launch of satellite constellations, space must be viewed as an ancestral global commons that contains the heritage and future of humanity’s scientific and cultural practices.

The number of small satellites has grown hugely in the past decade, from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for observational astronomy. Small satellites offer complementary cost-effective capabilities to both ground-based astronomy and larger space missions. Compared with ground-based astronomy, these advantages are not just in the accessibility of wavelength ranges where the Earth’s atmosphere is opaque, but also in stable, high-precision photometry, long-term monitoring and improved areal coverage. Astronomy has a long history of new observational parameter spaces leading to major discoveries. Here we discuss the potential for small satellites to explore new parameter spaces in astrophysics, drawing on examples from current and proposed missions, and spanning a wide range of science goals from binary stars, exoplanets and Solar System science to the early Universe and fundamental physics.

Radio observations from the Low Frequency Radio Array suggest that magnetic fields in high-redshift clusters are of similar strength as their local counterparts. This finding implies that magnetic fields evolve differently than predicted by cosmological simulations.

LOFAR reveals diffuse radio emission in massive high-redshift clusters, whose high radio luminosities indicate magnetic field strengths similar to those in nearby clusters, suggesting fast magnetic field amplification in the early Universe.

Precision quantum sensor networks are a useful and viable tool in multi-messenger astronomy for the detection of exotic fields that go beyond standard model theories. They could, for example, detect intense bursts of exotic low-mass fields generated by high-energy astrophysical events.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) looked at the Moon in the 6 µm wavelength region and found a signature of molecular water, distinguishing it from other forms of hydration. The authors estimate water abundances between 100 and 400 µg g⁻¹ at high latitudes, trapped within impact glasses or possibly in between grains.

Observations of the jellyfish galaxy JO206 reveal an ordered, large-scale magnetic field and extremely high polarization, which can be explained by the accretion of magnetized plasma from the intergalactic medium that condenses onto the external layers of the tail.

A reconstruction of the distribution of cold traps on the Moon at spatial scales varying from 1 km to 1 cm shows that the smallest ones are also the most numerous, 10–20% of the total. The total surface area of the Moon that can efficiently trap water is revised substantially upward, to 40,000 km².