Infinity Cosmos

August 2008 marked 15 years since the Mars Phoenix Lander completed its three-month mission studying Martian ice, soil, and atmosphere. The mission was a success, providing groundbreaking insights into the potential for life on the Red Planet. The main objectives of the mission were to search for evidence of a habitable zone, study the history of water in the Martian arctic, and assess the biological potential of the ice-soil boundary. Along the way, the spacecraft gathered images of itself with its Surface Stereo Imager (SSI), producing a mosaic of more than 100 different images taken with three different filters. The data gathered by Phoenix provided evidence that there is water on Mars, an essential ingredient for life. In addition, another soil sample suggested that the soil was composed of salts and other chemicals such as perchlorate, sodium, magnesium, chloride, and potassium. These discoveries paved the way for further research and exploration into the potential for life on Mar...

A satellite launched 20 years ago to advance understanding of the depletion of the ozone layer! This mission is a collaboration between universities, government, and industry, and its success is due to the hard work of a team of Canadian and international scientists led by Dr. Peter Bernath at the University of Waterloo. So, what is SCISAT? Well, it stands for “Satellite for Canadian Atmospheric Studies” and its primary purpose is to measure and understand the chemical processes that control the distribution of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere, particularly in the northern latitudes. The original two-year mission has now been extended until 2024, demonstrating the success of this mission thus far. SCISAT has made numerous discoveries since it was launched back in 2003. For instance, it has detected that ozone levels over Canada and the Arctic have decreased significantly since 2003. This has been linked to air pollution from sources such as vehicles and factories. The satellite has also bee...

  On August 8-10, 2023, the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC)/ISRO, in collaboration with the Aerial Delivery Research and Development Establishment (ADRDE)/DRDO, conducted a series of successful drogue parachute deployment tests at the Rail Track Rocket Sled (RTRS) facility of the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory in Chandigarh. This test is a crucial step towards the successful implementation of India’s ambitious Gaganyaan mission. Drogue parachutes are vital components of the Gaganyaan mission as they help stabilize the crew module and reduce its speed during re-entry into the atmosphere. The parachutes used for this test were specially designed conical ribbon-type parachutes with a diameter of 5.8 meters. The innovative single-stage reefing mechanism employed by these parachutes helps minimize canopy area and mitigate opening shock, thereby helping to ensure a smooth descent. The drogue parachutes were deployed using mortars, pyro-based devices which eject the parachute...

  It is amazing to think that our solar system is now tied for the most planets around a single star with the newfound discovery of Kepler-90i. In 2017, This exoplanet was discovered using artificial intelligence from Google, which shows that technology can be used to explore the unknown beyond our solar system. This recent discovery has been made possible with data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler-90i is a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days. It was discovered using machine learning, which is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers are able to “learn” and identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded changes in starlight caused by planets beyond our solar system. It is incredible to think that technology can help us uncover secrets of the universe such as this one. The discovery of Kepler-90i brings our solar system to a total of eight planets, which is a remarkable feat. It also bring...

  Have you ever gazed up at the sky and wondered what lies beyond our world? Thanks to the amazing imaging technology of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, we can now explore galaxies far away from our own. One such galaxy, NGC 6684, is a lenticular galaxy located 44 million light-years away in the constellation Pavo. Lenticular galaxies, like NGC 6684, have a distinct shape that sets them apart from other galaxies. These ghostly galaxies look like a lens when viewed from the side, with a large disk but no spiral arms. They are classified as being between elliptical and spiral galaxies, and they lack the dark dust lanes that can be seen in other galactic forms. When viewed through Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, this lenticular galaxy's pale light bathes the image in an ethereal glow. Hubble is currently undertaking a census of all nearby galaxies known within 10 Megaparsecs (32.6 million light-years). Before this project began, Hubble had already observed roughly 75% o...

  A close-up of the panorama taken by Curiosity’s Mastcam at “Pontours” reveals hexagonal patterns – outlined in red in the same image, right – that suggest these mud cracks formed after many wet-dry cycles occurring over years.  Often when we ponder the origins of life on Earth, we look to the another planet for answers. But the latest news from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover suggests that the answers may be a lot closer than we think. A new paper published in Nature has revealed evidence of wet-dry cycles occurring on early Mars. The findings were made by examining a patchwork of mud cracks found by Curiosity. The distinctive hexagonal pattern of these mud cracks suggests that the same conditions that created the cracks could have been favorable to the emergence of microscopic life. This is an exciting development for scientists who are trying to understand how life began on Earth. We know that persistent cycles of wet and dry conditions on land helped assemble the complex chem...

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the supernova remnant N103B (also known as SNR 0509-68.7) is a fascinating object for astronomers to explore. Captured in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the orange-red filaments show the shock fronts of the explosion, which allow us to calculate the original centre of the explosion. The filaments also indicate that the explosion is no longer expanding as a sphere, but is elliptical in shape. This could be due to part of the material ejected by the explosion hitting a denser cloud of interstellar material, which slowed its speed and thus resulted in an asymmetrical expansion. The gas in the lower half of the image and dense concentration of stars in the lower left are also believed to be part of NGC 1850, an associated star cluster which has been observed by Hubble before. Studying supernovas such as N103B can provide with valuable information about stellar evolution, star formation, and how interstellar material affects...