All About Space

ALL ABOUT SPACE ISSUE 131 ON SALE 16 JUNE This issue marks the tenth anniversary of All About Space. Launched in 2012 by Editor-in-Chief Dave Harfield before later being managed by Ben Biggs, I took the helm in 2015 after joining in 2013, and I’m delighted to be taking care of the magazine as it reaches such an important milestone. We couldn’t let this occasion pass by unnoticed, so you’ll see that All About Space has had a redesign for a slicker, cleanerlooking magazine. Your favourites – as requested by you – are still here, so you can enjoy the regulars from one month to the next. From Mysteries of the universe to Ask Space, there’s plenty to keep you entertained. As always, there are some new and exciting features…

© NASA/JPL-Caltech Giant Jupiter and the shadow of its biggest moon Ganymede dominate the view in this latest image from the system. NASA’s Juno mission whizzed close to the radiation-spewing planet for the 40th time on 25 February, with the resulting raw images of the encounter beamed home to Earth. Once there, citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos created this stunning view based on what was seen by the JunoCam instrument. Juno was flying roughly 71,000 kilometres (44,000 miles) above Jupiter’s cloud tops during the encounter, which is roughly 15 times closer than Ganymede’s orbital distance of 1.1 million kilometres (666,000 miles). If an observer could brave the radiation to float within the oval seen in the picture, that person would experience a total eclipse of the Sun. Total eclipses are more…

© NASA, ESA The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a unique group of merging galaxies that provides a glimpse into processes in the early universe. The five galaxies, known as Hickson Compact Group 40 (HCG 40), are in the process of merging into a single entity, a process that will be complete roughly a billion years from now. The image was released in anticipation of the venerable telescope’s 32nd anniversary on 24 April and is part of Hubble’s long-standing work in studying galactic evolution. “Studying nearby groups like HCG 40 helps astronomers learn about how galaxies formed,” the Hubble team said. “Tight groups like this may have been more common in the early universe, when their superheated, infalling material may have fuelled very energetic black holes called quasars.” The…

© NASA/JPL-Caltech Frost extends across the surface of a southern crater on Mars in a new photo of the Red Planet. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured this image of Mars’ frosty surface. Winters on Mars can be very cold, with temperatures near the poles dropping to -125 degrees Celsius (-195 degrees Fahrenheit). In turn, a layer of carbon dioxide frost, or dry ice, may form on the surface of some areas of the planet. By the middle of Mars’ fourmonth winter, frost can spread from the poles down to the middle latitudes of the planet, or about 50 degrees latitude, where it starts to melt under the warm rays of the Sun. This is equivalent to about the latitude of southern…

KEEP IN TOUCH /AllAboutSpaceMagazine @spaceanswers space@spaceanswers.com Key building blocks of DNA have been found in space rocks, suggesting cosmic impacts might have helped deliver these vital ingredients of life to ancient Earth.DNA is made of four main building blocks: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G). RNA also uses A, C and G, but swaps out thymine for uracil (U). Scientists wondering whether meteorites might have delivered these compounds to Earth have looked for nucleobases in space rocks, but until now scientists had only detected A and G in space rocks, and not T, C or U. Nucleobases have two flavours: purines and pyrimidines. The nucleobases previously seen in meteorites are both purines, which are each made of a hexagonal molecule fused with a pentagonal molecule. The ones…

NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars in November 2018 carrying the most sensitive seismometer ever designed. Since the mission’s arrival at the Red Planet, it has detected countless seismic events, dubbed marsquakes, using the signals to map the planet’s interior. But the two newly announced quakes, classified as S0976a and S1000a, were something special. “Not only are they the largest and most distant events by a considerable margin, S1000a has a spectrum and duration unlike any other event previously observed,” said Anna Horleston, a seismologist at the University of Bristol. “They truly are remarkable events in the Martian seismic catalogue.” The first seismic event, S0976a, was of magnitude 4.2 and occurred on 25 August 2021, originating in Valles Marineris, a vast network of canyons that extends for 4,000 kilometres (2,500…