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Roman Telescope's Launch, LHS 1140b's Atmosphere & Mars Polygons
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is days from launch, a rocky habitable-zone world may have a helium atmosphere, and Curiosity has found a vast honeycomb field stretching to the Martian horizon. Today's daily space briefing connects three stories that are really one question asked at different distances.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is on the verge of launch, and when it lifts off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, it won't just be another telescope joining the fleet. It'll complete a pairing that astronomers have been planning for years.
That division of labour matters because telescope time is finite and expensive. Right now, Webb essentially has to pick its targets without a comprehensive map.
The exoplanet connection is where things get particularly pointed right now. A rocky super-Earth called LHS 1140b, sitting forty-nine light-years away in its star's habitable zone, has shown signs of a helium atmosphere.
Meanwhile, on Mars, the Curiosity rover has encountered something that stops you. Across a region called Valle Grande, the rover photographed a field of honeycomb-like polygon fractures so large they stretch to the horizon in every direction in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama.
That's the thread running through Curiosity's recent findings. Organic molecules, ancient water signatures, and now a massive geometric field that hints at complex surface processes.
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