Table of contents for No. 92 in All About Space

Welcome © Pobytov We're just one issue away from one of the greatest moments in the history of spaceflight, when it'll be 50 years since humanity first touched down on the surface of the Moon with Apollo 11. We geared up to it last issue, offering you a free eBook on the History of NASA, and this month is of no exception; we hope you enjoy your mini-magazine of some of the rarest images in the Apollo Moon landing photo archives. This issue, our topics of interest begin at the heart of our true understanding of the universe: the theory of everything. As it sounds, it encompasses every law that governs the cosmos – from quantum gravity and the curvature of space to electricity and magnetism. However, as you'll find…

In 2020, NASA will send living things to deep space for the first time since Apollo NASA is getting ready to launch living creatures to deep space for the first time in nearly five decades. Agency engineers are putting together a briefcase-sized spacecraft called BioSentinel which will carry yeast cells into orbit around the Sun to help scientists better understand the radiation environment beyond our planet's protective magnetic bubble. © NASA BioSentinel is one of 13 cubesats flying aboard the Artemis 1 mission, which is currently targeted for mid-2020. That's 47.5 years after NASA last launched organisms beyond low-Earth orbit – the Apollo 17 astronauts, who reached the moon in December 1972, were the last – the last organisms launched on purpose, anyway; a few hardy microbes stow away on…

Solving the problem Some of the theories behind finding the truth String theory String theory says that the cosmos is made up of one-dimensional strings which vibrate at different frequencies that correspond to different particles. It’s a whole new way of thinking about the universe, and requires there to be extra, hidden dimensions – at least another six on top of the four that we are aware of – that we can’t see. Loop quantum gravity Loop quantum gravity, or LQG for short, isn’t aiming to be a theory of everything, but it could be a step on the path towards one. It’s defining feature is that it tried to maintain as much of Einstein’s theory as possible as it portrays the gravitational field in a series of loops, splitting…

Anatomy of a super rocket China’s most powerful booster consists of at least two stages and four boosters that will take it away from Earth and beyond © VCG / Getty; Adrian Mann Payload The payload of the rocket can hold up to 25 tonnes to LEO, or 14 tonnes to GEO, which will come in handy when building a space station. Third stage The third stage is optional as it depends on whether the target is medium-Earth orbit or direct-to-GEO. This stage uses two further hypergolic-fuelled YF-50D engines. YF-75D engines This liquid-cryogenic rocket engine also uses the same liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as the first stage. Boosters The four boosters each utilise two extremely powerful YF-100 engines that burn liquid hydrogen and kerosene for better performance, while also…

How did astronomers discover the exomoon? Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler space telescope, astronomers were able to catch the starlight’s signal of Kepler-1625b-i Kepler-1625b emerges The exoplanet Kepler-1625b begins to block out light as it crosses in front of the star's face, but the moon is not doing the same. Observing the starlight As Kepler-1625b continues on its orbit the star loses a fraction of its brightness halfway through the transit, equating to about 9.5 hours. The end of exoplanet transit The Hubble Space Telescope observed close to the full 19-hour-long transit. However, the moon was just about to enter the frame. Kepler-1625b-i appears Three-and-a-half hours after Kepler-1625b’s transit, a second smaller transit was observed, attributed to the exomoon Kepler-1625b-i.…

Alien DNA vs Human DNA How does the synthetic hachimoji DNA compare with the natural DNA found in your own body? Regular DNA Human DNA contains four building blocks, or chemical bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). These cross-link in pairs between two strands – A with T and C with G – coloured here as red, yellow, blue and green. Biggest difference Perhaps the largest difference is that human, or natural DNA, is known to exist in life forms, but the ‘alien’ DNA has not been found here or elsewhere. It simply points to the potential for eight informational ingredients rather than four. Double-stranded helix Both the human and ‘alien’ DNA created by NASAfunded scientists have a double-stranded helix structure. The two strands of DNA…

Missions on the hunt for alien life Mars 2020 Mission aims To seek signs of past habitable conditions on Mars and search for signs of microbial life. This rover by NASA's Mars Exploration Program is set to launch next summer and begin investigations in 2021. It will collect dozens of samples of surface soil and rock cores which will eventually be sent back to Earth for analysis. Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Mission aims To find planets outside of our Solar System, including those that may support life. TESS launched on 18 April 2018 to search for exoplanets around nearby stars. A catalogue has since been created noting potentially habitable planets; the idea is that it helps researchers find the most promising candidates. Europa Clipper Mission aims To conduct a reconnaissance…

TED TALKS SPECIAL ASK Space Our experts answer your questions © University of Portsmouth HUNT FOR LIFE Why haven't we detected other civilisations? It's a puzzle; we do expect these civilisations to exist. After all, there could be a trillion planets in the galaxy – maybe more. You don't need any special knowledge to consider this question, and I've explored it with lots of people over the years. I've found they often frame their thinking in terms of the barriers that would need to be cleared if a planet is to host a communicative civilisation. They usually identify four key barriers. The first is habitability – we need a terrestrial planet in that ‘Goldilocks zone’, where water flows as a liquid. Abiogenesis – the creation of life from non-life –…

Jargon buster Conjunction A conjunction is an alignment of objects at the same celestial longitude. The conjunction of the Moon and the planets is determined with reference to the Sun. A planet is in conjunction with the Sun when it and Earth are aligned on opposite sides of the Sun. Right Ascension (RA) Right Ascension is to the sky what longitude is to the surface of the Earth, corresponding to east and west directions. It is measured in hours, minutes and seconds since, as the Earth rotates on its axis, we see different parts of the sky throughout the night. Declination (Dec) This tells you how high an object will rise in the sky. Like Earth’s latitude, Dec measures north and south. It’s measured in degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds. There…

Naked eye & binocular targets The summer Milky Way offers a plethora of targets Deneb (Alpha Cygni) At magnitude 1.25 Deneb is the 19th-brightest star in the sky. A blue-white supergiant more than 100-times wider than the Sun, it is between 55,000 and 200,000-times more luminous than our own star. It will become the Pole Star around the year 9,800. Scutum Star Cloud Hanging low in the southern sky after midnight, the Scutum Star Cloud looks like a small, misty puff of cloud to the naked eye. Binoculars show it as a hazy smudge of stars with a brighter star cluster, Messier 11, embedded within it. Messier 13 Also known as the ’Great Globular in Hercules’, M13 is an enormous cluster of stars 145 light years wide and 22,200 light…

Our contributors include… Kelly Oakes Space science writer Is there really a theory of everything? Kelly speaks to the cosmologists who are for it, while others are against a unified theory of the cosmos. Details on page 16. Stuart Atkinson Astronomer Take Stuart's tours of the summer night sky this month – there are plenty of clusters, galaxies and nebulae on display in the constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius. Ryan Weed Physicist & pilot The antimatter physicist joins Brian Cox, Sara Seager and more to answer your pressing questions about the universe, planets, rockets and more . Lee Cavendish Staff Writer We're likely to have uncovered a brand-new exomoon for the very first time – but what do we really know about it? Head over to page 42 for Lee's…

Astronauts are buzzing about a fleet of space bees © NASA The ISS has been joined by a new host of robotic companions, with Bumble being shown in the image. NASA’s new breed of free-flying robotic systems, known as Astrobee, can help astronauts with caretaking responsibilities, therefore improving astronaut productivity. The long-term goal is to help with NASA’s eventual return to the Moon. NASA astronaut Anne McClain is pictured here performing hardware checks on Bumble in the Kibo module. Bumble was delivered with its fellow robotic companion, Honey, as part of Northrop Grumman’s 11th commercial resupply mission in April 2019.…

A star in the Big Dipper is an alien invader Words by Mindy Weisberger © A. Fujii A star in the Big Dipper is an intergalactic alien, according to clues in its chemical fingerprints. The star's chemistry is unlike that of all known stars in the Milky Way, and instead has more in common with stars in nearby dwarf galaxies. Researchers suspected that the stellar oddball, named J1124+4535, originated in a dwarf galaxy that collided with the Milky Way long ago. According to that theory, when the dwarf galaxy fell apart it stranded this star in our cosmic neighbourhood. The star was first discovered in the constellation Ursa Major in 2015 by the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in China. Higher-resolution images were captured in 2017 by…

Mysterious 'alien Neptunes' are probably water worlds Words by Charles Q. Choi Much remains hotly debated about sub-Neptunes, such as how they formed. Their compositions remain unknown, and understanding them could help shed light on exoplanets' origins. Previous research suggested that sub-Neptunes were either gas dwarf planets with rocky cores surrounded by envelopes rich in hydrogen and helium, or water worlds with liquid and frozen water in addition to rock and gas. To investigate the make-up of sub-Neptunes, scientists ran simulations of planetary growth to see what scenarios might best explain the masses and diameters seen among exoplanets so far. Knowing the mass and diameter of a planet can help astronomers estimate its average density, and simulations of planetary growth can help reveal whether compositions of gas, rock, ice or…

What is the theory of everything? The theory of everything needs to encompass all we already know about the universe Theory of everything The theory will have to bring together a lot of different aspects of physics, from Einstein’s general theory of relativity that governs our understanding of the largest structures in the universe to the Standard Model that helps us understand the smallest particles. Quantum gravity Theoretical physicists working on quantum gravity are trying to combine quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general theory of relativity. If they’re able to do it, it will be the first step towards a theory of everything. Space-time Einstein’s general theory of relativity combines space and time into one four-dimensional description of the universe, referred to as space-time. The idea is that objects with a…

Seamus Tuohy THE FUTURE OF MOON LANDING TECHNOLOGIES NASA and private enterprises are forever on the hunt for new initiatives to make lunar landings safer and more routine. Draper Laboratory is one of the organisations incredibly close to developing self-landing spacecraft Interviewed by Lee Cavendish © NASA; How is Draper looking to improve and make lunar landings more routine? Draper’s making a rather large investment of time and energy in developing technologies for landing on the Moon very precisely and very safely. That ranges from small landers all the way up to landers that would carry humans down to the surface of the Moon and also very large cargo delivery systems which would carry habitation modules down to the surface of the Moon. The technologies apply to all of the…

The theories It's a lure like no other, so what could be causing such a cosmic attraction? Lure of gravity The Great Attractor is referred to as a gravitational anomaly – if it wasn't pulling on the Milky Way and scores of other galaxies in this region, they would be continuing to fly apart. The crucial question is what is exerting that gravitational pull? Virgo Supercluster The Virgo Supercluster contains the Virgo Cluster and, importantly, the Local Group, which includes the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies and their satellites on its outskirts. However, the supercluster is not massive enough to cause the pull. Something hidden A chunk of the universe is blocked from view by the gases, stars and dust of the Milky Way, and it just so happens that…

How Long March 5 will launch its payload 1 Liftoff from Wenchang Launch Center When the countdown is done, all ten engines from the four boosters, as well as the core stage, will ignite. 2 Separation of the boosters After roughly three minutes the boosters will separate. The first stage carries on firing for an additional five minutes. 3 Introduction of the second stage After the second stage separates and the payload is exposed at the tip of the rocket, the two YF-75D rockets ignite for roughly another ten minutes. 5 Payload separation After the second stage’s firing is complete, the payload will then separate from the second stage. At this point the third stage would ignite or the payload will stay in low-Earth orbit, depending on the plan. 4…

FUTURE MISSIONS Four missions that Long March 5 will carry into space 1 Chang’e-5 Its fourth edition made history as it became the first to explore the far side of the Moon, whereas Chang’e-5 could potentially collect a lunar surface sample and return it to Earth. This launch is currently scheduled for late 2019. 2 Mars Global Remote Sensing Orbiter and Small Rover (HX-1) Mid-2020 could see the launch of a Martian explorer, consisting of a orbiter and a rover. The rover will be able to provide up-close analysis of the soil, searching for any signs of ancient life. 3 Tiangong program Arguably the main reason to construct this heavy-duty rocket, the Tiangong program has seen two space laboratories launched in the past With the Long March…

Where are we likely to find life? Venus Venus is dry and incredibly hot, making it a very inhospitable planet, but some scientists suggest it would have been habitable more than 2 billion years ago when it was far more temperate. There's even a suggestion life retreated to the planet's cooler clouds – which are mostly sulphuric acid – and that life could remain there today! Mars It's a long-held dream that the Red Planet harbours life – David Bowie even sang about it. Although it's yet to be found, there's still great optimism. The past existence of liquid water – still found as low-volume liquid brine – gives hope. Scientists have also detected methane, suggesting an active surface Ceres Ceres is a dwarf planet which lies between the orbits…

What do radio observations reveal about the centre of the Milky Way? © Rice University Radio is really brilliant. It allows us to peer much more deeply. It doesn't get stopped by dust, so you can see everything. Well, we do see something interesting in the Milky Way. All that dust has gone, so it's not a problem. But the view is very different. The centre of the Milky Way is aglow, and this isn't starlight. This is a light called synchrotron radiation, and it's formed from electrons spiralling around cosmic magnetic fields. The plane is aglow with this light. We can also see strange tufts coming off it, and objects which don't appear to line up with anything that we can see with our own eyes. Radio waves have…

HEROES OF F SPACE SPACE J. Robert Oppenheimer His World War II efforts may have made the headlines, but his work in physics should not be overlooked ©Ed Westcott (U.S. Government photographer) A man dubbed “the father of the atomic bomb” also played an important role in understanding quantum mechanics in the mid-20th century. He worked alongside many of the brightest minds in physics and even had the chance to manage them in accordance with the infamous Manhattan Project. Born Julius Robert Oppenheimer on 22 April 1904 in New York City, United States, Oppenheimer took to science and maths from an early age and began travelling the world in the search of education. After he graduated summa cum laude – Latin…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE New details of dwarf planet Haumea’s elusive ring revealed Words by Hanneke Weitering ©Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía The oval-shaped dwarf planet Haumea, which is surrounded by an almost perfectly circular ring of particles, is the most distant ringed object in the Solar System. Haumea's ring is too faint to be seen from planet Earth, so astronomers have turned to context clues to find out more about these particles. ' In a new study, researchers with the São Paulo Research Foundation in Brazil have detailed the ring's size, shape and other characteristics by simulating the Haumea system on a computer. By simulating the ring's particles in different configurations around the dwarf planet and calculating which scenario would render the ring most stable,…

Can there really be a theory of everything? Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany © ESO; CERN; Tobias Roetsch; Epp.golp; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; zmeel; HossenfelderS; Molendijk, Bart / Anefo What exactly do physicists mean when they say ‘theory of everything’? A theory which combines all the known fundamental forces. That’s the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces and gravity. Do you think we’re likely to find one? I think it is feasible. But the asterisk to that is that we would never really know that what we have is actually the final theory, because it could always be that tomorrow we discover something that does not fit in, and we need a new theory again. Would it really…

INTERVIEW BIO Seamus Tuohy Seamus Tuohy is the principal director in charge of the civil and commercial space programmes at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Draper is a research and development organisation that has been around since 1932, playing a hand in the history of space exploration as it developed the Apollo Guidance Computer which took humans to the Moon. Recently Tuohy has been overseeing development and testing of the Draper Multi-Environment Navigator (DMES) which, if successful, will allow autonomous landing on the Moon with minimal need for human operation.…

The Great Attractor: where it’s located As well as questioning what the mysterious force is, scientists have been seeking to pinpoint its location Towards the Centaurus Cluster The Great Attractor is a dense region about 220 million light years away, and it exerts its pull on the Milky Way and other galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster in the direction of the Centaurus and Norma clusters. Virgo Supercluster Containing the Virgo Cluster and Local Group, this Supercluster is 110 million light years across On the arm of Laniakea The Virgo Supercluster, which includes the Virgo Cluster that contains the Milky Way and all you can see here, is part of a far larger supercluster called Laniakea. Local Galactic Group The Local Group, with its 40 galaxies, has a diameter of about…

TOP TECH The YF-100 engine In the process of producing a more environmentally friendly engine that can provide the propulsion needed for heavy cargo delivery into space, the YF-100 engine was born. This is the most powerful engine used on the Long March 5 and is fitted twice over on each of the boosters, with each engine providing a thrust at sea level of 1,200 kN. This engine is much more efficient and safer for the environment as CALT introduced cryogenic propulsion systems that use kerolox – a term used when burning both liquid oxygen and liquid kerosene – rocket fuel.…

What the exomoon hunters are saying Laura Kreidberg “I have been working on data analysis for this particular instrument on Hubble for about seven years now, so my pipeline has been put through the wringer. Even the hint of a signal that they saw doesn't hold up in the new analysis. [We] conclude that the lunar transit signal found was likely an artefact of the data reduction.” David Kipping and Alex Teachey “Suffice to say, we think the picture is a bit more complicated than is being reported. That is, newer studies are not right by virtue of being new, and I think reporting along the lines of 'the moon isn't there after all' would be a bridge too far given the evidence in hand.” René Heller “We find that…

What could this mean for the future of hunting for life? “It is inadequate to simply speculate about what alien life might look like. It is necessary to go into the laboratory with specific, actionable chemical structures and see how they perform” Steven Benner, distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution “This new work will help us to develop effective instruments and experiments that will expand the scope of what we look for” Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division “Incorporating a broader understanding of what is possible in our instrument design and mission concepts will result in a more inclusive and therefore more effective search for life beyond Earth” Mary Voytek, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA headquarters “The discovery that DNA with eight nucleotide…

INTERVIEW BIO Professor Brandon Brown Brandon Brown is a professor of physics at the University of San Francisco, United States. His new book – The Apollo Chronicles: Engineering America’s First Moon Missions – tells the story of the Apollo program from first to last in a well-written and engaging way. The motivation behind the book was to understand what his father was doing for NASA as an engineer, but there wasn’t any literature that covered the whole project from such a perspective. This was the genesis for his comprehensive guide to the impressive engineering feats that occurred in the United States’ amazing Apollo space program.…

STARGAZER What’s in the sky? 20 JUN The Ophiuchids reach their peak of five meteors per hour 1 JUL Globular cluster Messier 22 is well placed for observation in Sagittarius 2 JUL Total solar eclipse visible from Argentina, Chile, Pitcairn Islands, Uruguay, Brazil, French Polynesia, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Falkland Islands, Cook Islands, Ecuador, Kiribati and Colombia 14 JUL Dwarf planet Pluto reaches opposition in Sagittarius, glowing at magnitude 14.5 21 JUN June solstice 15 JUL The Capricornids reach their peak of five meteors per hour 23 JUN © NASA, ESA The Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8) is well placed for observation in Sagittarius 1 JUL © Roberto Mura © Astronomical Instituteof the Charles University Open star cluster IC 4756 is well placed for…

Tips & tricks Location, location, location Bright displays of NLC can be seen from anywhere with a view north, but you’ll see much more if your northern horizon is low and flat. A treat for the eyes You don’t need any special equipment to observe NLC. However, binoculars will show you beautiful fine structures and detail. Use social media Many observers post NLC alerts on social media, so following them on Twitter and Facebook will help you see displays. Be patient NLC displays often die down to nothing, and it’s tempting to then give up and go home. Don’t. Many displays return much bigger and brighter than before!…

The Northern Hemisphere The Northern Hemisphere Bright- to faint-magnitude targets are on offer this July for astronomers armed with the right equipment © Wil Tirion; ESO; ESA/Hubble and NASA; Naskies The constellations of Lyra, Aquila, Hercules, Sagittarius, Scorpius and Ophiuchus are in easy reach this month. What’s more, these star patterns are packed with night-sky objects. Fans of tight-knit globular star clusters should turn their attention to Ophiuchus and Hercules, where they will be rewarded with sights of stellar-rich Messier 10, Messier 12, Messier 13, Messier 14 and Messier 92. Meanwhile astrophotographers will get great enjoyment from the binary star system Rho Ophiuchi in Ophiuchus, which is surrounded with a red emission nebula and very impressive light- and dark-brown dust lanes. Cygnus is another goldmine, with the Veil Nebula, Fireworks…