can water travel in space

Water in space

Did you know that up to 80% of the water on the International Space Station is recycled? Astronauts living and working 400 km above our planet might prefer not to think about it, but the water they drink is recycled from their colleague’s sweat and exhaled breath – collected as condensation on the Space Station’s walls.

Water is precious on Earth but even more so in space where all drinkable water must be transported from home or recycled. As water is a dense and heavy substance it takes a lot of energy to propel it into space – there is only so much a rocket can carry so the less water we send, the more scientific equipment can be sent in its place. This is one of the reasons why there is no shower on the International Space Station – astronauts wash themselves only with wet-wipes for six months! Astronauts in space often list fresh fruit and a shower as the things they miss most from Earth.

As we explore further from our home planet providing water and food to astronauts will become more and more challenging so just like on Earth reduce, reuse, and recycle is the mantra for off-world explorers and their space agencies.

For over thirty years the European Space Agency and partner universities have been working to develop  a self-sustained eco-system in a box  that astronauts could take with them on a spacecraft to explore our Solar System. Endlessly recycling waste such as urine and sweat, the system uses a chain of filters, bacteria in bioreactors and chemical reactions to produce clean water and food. The goal is to become completely self-sufficient so astronauts could travel through deep space forever producing the three basic elements of life: water, oxygen and food.

The European Space Agency is testing a closed-loop life-support system in  Barcelona, Spain , to support a number of rats indefinitely in a comfortable habitat – a complete ecosystem shut off from our environment created with one purpose: to keep the rats healthy and happy.

We are not there yet, but in its thirty years the team working on this project, dubbed Melissa, has come a long way and its processes are providing clean drinking water for universities, hotels, monks and researchers in Antarctica. If it is designed for spaceflight it will almost certainly work anywhere in the world – and the goal of clean water and food through recycling is shared by all.

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Everything You Wanted to Know About Water in Space

Is there water in Space? Can we use it? What happens to it in a vacuum, and can we even produce water in space? These questions will become important as we begin sending people out beyond the International Space Station again.

Is there water in space?

Long story short, — yes! And a lot! Water is a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, both of which are present in space. The first is in the composition of interstellar matter, and the second is remnants after the explosions of stars. Over the past 30 years, water has been discovered almost everywhere in space. It exists on most planets in the Solar System: Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, in the rings of Saturn, on many satellites, including the Moon, and even outside our Milky Way Galaxy, in interstellar clouds. But how is water formed in space?

It might come as a surprise, but water in space is formed with the help of comets and volcanoes. The tail of a comet is nothing but the result of the evaporation of ice from the nucleus’ surface due to the influence of the solar wind. By the way, scientists believe that it was comets that brought water to Earth in the form of meteoritic ice rain.

But how do volcanoes help water float in space? Very simple. On large planets like Saturn, there are a lot of active volcanoes, and the evaporation from them rises much higher than on Earth. At those altitudes, the vapour freezes and is carried away into space.

What happens when water is in space?

So, we found out that the Universe does have water, but in what form does it exist there? We, the people of Earth, are very lucky. Our planet’s atmosphere creates an optimal temperature and pressure range so that most of the water on Earth is in a liquid state. On other celestial bodies, things are somewhat different. Their conditions are more severe, which is why water can only exist in the form of ice or steam, very rarely in the form of groundwater. For example, in 2018, at the South pole of Mars, under a layer of ice, scientists discovered an underground lake with liquid water. But on Venus, water exists in negligible amounts and only in the form of steam high in the clouds since this planet’s surface is heated up to 460 degrees Celsius.

Is water in outer space rare?

Well, water doesn’t exist in space at all, but ice does. Space is a vacuum, and liquid water cannot exist in a vacuum. Due to the low temperature and almost zero pressure, it instantly vapourizes and then freezes, forming tiny pieces of ice.

Astronauts in space missions had observed this transformation more than once when they released urine from their spacecraft into outer space. According to them, it immediately begins to boil and then crystallizes.

What happens to water in zero gravity?

The astronauts on the ISS regularly conduct experiments with water because, in zero gravity, it behaves truly miraculously. The reason is the force of surface tension. This force tends to reduce the surface area of water, forming a ball out of it, which is a geometric figure with the smallest surface area.

As a result, it is practically impossible to carry out any ‘normal’ terran manipulations with water in zero gravity. In space, any water drop will form a sphere. For this reason, it is impossible to take a shower in zero gravity or even cry normally. Tears will not flow down the face but will roll into a bubble.

Another widespread question is —  Can you boil water in space? You will be surprised, but in orbit, this process is much easier than on Earth due to the lack of convection and fluidity. As a result, water boils even faster, and the vapour bubbles do not rise above the surface; instead, they combine into a giant bubble that oscillates inside the liquid. Check out how it looks.

How to produce water in space

This question is becoming ever more relevant as humanity expands into space. However, there is no commonly accepted answer to it yet. The challenge of fresh water on spacecraft has not been fully resolved,  so astronauts have to save and recycle it a lot. Plus, we already need to look for ways to convert extraterrestrial ice into water if we want to colonize the Moon and Mars. Let’s find out what is being done to ensure that astronauts do not lack water in space.

How do astronauts get water in the space station?

For a long time, the need for water at space stations was answered by supply missions, which simply brought clean water to the station. Today, half of the water supply is still carried this way, while the other half is made possible by the water recycling system in space. Previously, spacecraft life support systems could only obtain oxygen from water by electrolysis. The resulting hydrogen and carbon dioxide were considered exhaust gases and thrown overboard. NASA understood that it was losing two important consumables, but at that time, it was impossible to implement a more efficient system in orbital conditions. It became possible only in 2010 when Hamilton Sundstrand developed a plant that uses the Sabatier method, which uses hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce water. The tech was named ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support Systems), and it uses two methods of water production and purification in space:

• Condensation of moisture from the air.
• Urine and solid waste recycling.

The ECLSS system can recover 100% moisture from the air and 85% water from urine, which makes it about 93% effective. The resulting water is purified and can be used for both drinking and technical needs. But with each complete water use cycle, its total volume decreases by 7%, which is why the ISS is still dependent on supplies from Earth. Considering the cost of delivering one kg of cargo into space (several thousand dollars), water in space is literally worth its weight in gold. So, the need for the efficient use and extraction of water in orbit remains relevant. And this is where startups come in.

Orbit Fab – Fast and cheap supply ISS with water

In 2019, private startup Orbit Fab became the first to deliver water to the ISS using its unique in-space satellite refueling technology. At the heart of the technology is the RAFTI plug-in fuel transfer interface, which can replace fill and drain valves on the spacecraft, allowing both initial refueling on the ground and the possibility of refueling in orbit. Because it is one of the most inert and easy-to-handle fuels available, water was chosen to demonstrate the fuel transfer technology. As a result, Orbit Fab has carried out two successful missions on the ISS, proving what was believed impossible — providing spacecraft with fuel and other materials in orbit without needing manned missions.

Masten will mine water from the Lunar Soil

The ROCKET M project is a joint brainchild of three companies — Masten, Honeybee Robotics and MOXIE — which have worked for NASA before. This time they got together to create a mobile rocket-powered drilling rig that will extract ice from the lunar soil. The rig will break through the soil to a depth of two meters as, today, scientists believe that there is not enough water ice available for extraction deeper than that. The drilling site will be covered with a hermetic dome, while torch flashes will evaporate water and throw up rock particles. Further, all the impurities will be filtered out from the ice. According to the developers, ROCKET M will be available in five years and should be able to produce up to 500 tons of water ice annually.

How else can we use water in space?

Creating fuel from space ice

As we already know, there is a lot of water in space — not as a liquid but in the form of ice or steam. Ice deposits have been discovered on the Moon and Mars, meaning rocket fuel can be obtained from this ice. The main components of the chemical propellants modern rockets are powered by are oxygen and hydrogen. These same elements form parts of water and can be extracted from it by electrolysis. By mastering the technology of processing lunar and Martian ice, we will be able to make chemical fuel from it and refuel rockets right on the spot, without the need to deliver fuel from Earth. However, this is not the most efficient method.

Using water as a space propulsion system

Since 2019, the Italian startup Miprons has been developing two innovative high-performance miniature space propulsion systems that use water as fuel. In these systems, the water is split into hydrogen and oxygen in an electrolysis process, and then a steam generator is added.

The company is backed by the Italian and European space agencies and recently signed a contract with Thales Alenia to develop a micro water propulsion system for its satellites. Miprons says its project is part of a larger strategy to use water in space for both engines and humans.

The prospects of this development are confirmed by its growing popularity. The patent for the water engine has already been acquired in 50 countries worldwide. In the meantime, we should wait and see how the prototype testing goes.

Mirpons is not the only company to introduce water as space fuel. Pale Blue , Aurora Propulsion Technologies , Bradford Space, Tethers Unlimited and Momentus also develop Resistor-active water-plasma propulsion systems. If you’ve ever heard a kettle whistle, then you’ve also heard how this technology works. The system consumes no more than a cup of water during its entire service life. A minimal amount of electricity heats the water, which is then sprayed at an extremely high speed, thus moving everything attached to it forward.

Ice houses on Mars

NASA experts believe that Martian ice can be an excellent building material. The Mars Ice Home project is an inflatable dome surrounded by a shell of water ice. The ice will protect Martian pioneers from radiation, and the walls of the house will be translucent, which will allow part of the light spectrum to penetrate the room creating natural lighting. Plus, the water stored inside the shell will be used later to produce rocket fuel. These and other methods, which are likely to appear soon, should help humanity answer the question of how to get water in space. Space technologies are developing rapidly, making things that used to seem like fantasy into commonplace technologies. So, we can hope that, soon enough, water on orbiting space stations and

An amateur rocket enthusiast with a keen interest in all space-related activity. Looking forward to the day when the UK starts launching rockets into space and I'm able to watch launches (from a safe distance of course).

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Where we find water in space and why it's so important

Astronomers seem determined to find water in space, but why? A guide to where we find water beyond Earth and why it's vital that we do.

Penny Wozniakiewicz

There has been a lot of talk about water in space over the past few years, as astronomers hunt for water among the icy moons of the Solar System or in the atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting stars beyond our Solar System, or even closer to home on Mars and our own Moon.

Why is it that astronomers are so concerned with finding water in the Solar System, and why it is vital to our exploration of space?

All life as we know it needs water. We ourselves are made up of 55–60% water and we need a continuous supply to stay alive.

Water is also needed for daily hygiene and, if a colony beyond Earth is to be even remotely self-sustaining, for growing crops.

In this guide we'll look at where we find water in space, our Solar System, the Universe, and what makes the discovery of water beyond Earth so exciting.

First up, let's take a look at our own Moon

Water on the Moon

Staring up at the Moon with the naked eye, we can forgive early astronomers for assuming the dark patches spread out over its surface were seas – or ‘ lunar maria ’ as they were named, after the Latin word for seas.

Informed by centuries of ever-improving observations and over 60 years of space exploration, we now know the maria are not seas but rather vast expanses of volcanic basalt that erupted over the lunar surface several billion years ago. 

The Moon is in fact very dry: more so than any desert on Earth.

Yet despite that, on 23 August 2023 the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully deployed its lander and rover near the lunar south pole in search of water . 

So why search for water in such a dry location?

Although there is no liquid water on the Moon, water is present in the form of ice trapped between grains in the lunar soil and incorporated into minerals and glassy beads produced by impacts.

The potential for such hidden water was first suggested by remote observations of the surface, and later confirmed by NASA’s LCROSS mission, which in 2009 fired an empty rocket stage into a crater on the lunar surface and identified ice in the plume of material flung up from the crash site.

Further observations of the surface by the likes of the NASA and German Aerospace Center’s SOFIA telescope have since suggested the south polar region of the Moon in particular may host far more water than we ever imagined.

As much as 100–400mg of water (about one raindrop) may be present in each kilo of lunar soil. 

While this may seem a small amount, it has prompted several space agencies to propose lunar surface missions and instruments to find and characterise lunar water over the next decade.

ESA's PROSPECT mission

One such instrument is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) PROSPECT payload, destined for the south polar region.

This consists of a drill to dig down and obtain samples from the near-surface, together with an onboard laboratory that will subject samples to heat and measure the gases, including any water vapour, that are released.

"Should water really be present in such significant quantities, the potential implications would be enormous, especially for upcoming human exploration programmes," says Dr Dave Heather, PROSPECT project scientist at ESA.

"Water is essential for human survival. It can be used for drinking and also be broken down into its constituent components to provide oxygen for breathing."

Water and space exploration

Water also has another handy use up its sleeve – if you split it into hydrogen and oxygen, you get the components for rocket fuel.

But space travel is a costly business, and one that gets more expensive and more complex the more you want to take with you and the further you want to go.

Minimising mass on board spacecraft is a high priority for space agencies and mission engineers.

Since water is vital to any human space mission, it cannot simply be left behind, but perhaps now we can mine it from lunar soils. 

Dr Mahesh Anand, a professor of planetary science at the Open University, is exploring ways to do this.

"Water is considered a key resource for enabling a more affordable and sustainable exploration of the Moon," he says.

"The availability, extraction and utilisation of water in situ on the Moon would therefore lower the cost and risks for future missions."

Water in the Solar System

If the Moon harbours water, where else might we find it, and in what form?

Today, Earth is the only planetary body in our Solar System with sustained liquid water present on its surface.

This is because water exists as a liquid at a range of pressures and temperatures that are found, thankfully for us, on Earth’s surface.

However, over the last few decades a plethora of telescopes and spacecraft have shown that water is present throughout our Solar System.

Inner planets

We need only look as far as the other terrestrial planets, Mercury, Venus and Mars to find water.

Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth and has an extremely dense, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere that means its surface is like an oven day and night.

You might think such a planet could not possibly host liquid water. Nevertheless, water is present on Venus, albeit only as vapour in its atmosphere .

Mercury sits even closer to the Sun than Venus, but its thin atmosphere means the surface continuously oscillates between hot and cold during the night as the planet rotates.

You might expect any water present to have boiled off completely, yet there is evidence that, just like on Earth’s Moon, water is present as ice within permanently shadowed regions of craters near Mercury’s poles.

Mars and beyond

On Mars , water ice can be found in plain sight in the polar ice caps.

Yet there is also evidence of vast quantities of it – perhaps more than five million cubic kilometres – hidden beneath its surface.

If all this ice melted, there’d be enough water to create an ocean 35 metres deep over the entire surface of Mars – or fill Loch Ness over 650,000 times! 

Water is also present on Mars, in small quantities, as tenuous clouds high in the atmosphere.

Near the poles, visiting Mars landers have observed water freezing out of the atmosphere at night, forming a frost on the ground.

Moving beyond Mars in our journey through space we reach the asteroids , which also contain water: potentially hundreds of billions of litres of the stuff.

On many asteroids this water has become incorporated into minerals, but on some, like Ceres , water is still present as ice.

Indeed, Ceres’s low density suggests that as much as 25% of the dwarf planet could be water ice.

Outer planets

At the giant planets, Saturn and Jupiter both have water vapour in their atmospheres, while Uranus and Neptune are thought to have a water ice mantle lurking beneath theirs.

Water ice also dominates the spectacular rings around Saturn , accounting for around 99% of the 15 billion billion kilos of material.

That’s over half the amount of ice currently in the Antarctic ice sheet, but spread out over a much larger area.

Perhaps more excitingly, it seems water is also present as ice on many of the moons of the giant planets, and it may even be liquid on some.

As far as we know, the only surface oceans in our Solar System are found on Earth.

However, there is evidence for subsurface oceans on at least the Jovian moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, and the Saturnian moons Enceladus, Dione and Titan.

Indeed, the total water content (liquid and ice) of these bodies is around 80 times that of Earth, making them prime targets for discovering and studying water in space.

While heating by the Sun at these distances is minimal, the presence of liquid subsurface oceans on these icy worlds is thought possible due to tidal heating.

Heat is generated as the moons are squashed and squeezed by the gravitational pull of their parent planet fighting against that of their sibling satellites.

During its visit to the Saturnian system, the Cassini mission beamed back remarkable images showing plumes of water vapour and ice grains shooting out from Enceladus’s surface.

Using the Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA) on board, Cassini was able to sample and study these plumes.

"We found salt- and carbon-rich water ice grains originating from a large reservoir of liquid water below the icy crust of Enceladus," says Dr Ralf Srama, astronomy professor at University of Stuttgart and lead scientist for the CDA.

The existence of subsurface oceans is exciting because of the potential significance to the question of whether suitable conditions for life might be found beyond Earth.

Scientists like Dr Frank Postberg, professor of planetary science at the Freie Universität Berlin, have been working with plume data from CDA to study conditions below Enceladus’s icy crust.

He says, "We found a variety of salts that tell us Enceladus’s subsurface ocean is a little less salty than Earth’s ocean, and is a ‘soda ocean’ with lots of dissolved carbonates and carbon dioxide, which also provide more alkaline waters than on Earth."

Promisingly, they also identified organics at Enceladus (which are needed for and can be created by life), phosphorus (which is essential for life as we know it) and minerals that indicate hydrothermal activity – a proposed mechanism for providing materials for chemical reactions and heat in the dark, subsurface world.

Edge of the Solar System

Although few spacecraft have ventured beyond Saturn, those that have revealed evidence of water ice on the moons of Uranus and Neptune, and on Kuiper Belt objects such as Pluto, which is thought to be composed of up to 30% water ice.

Comets, which we observe from Earth as they traverse the space within our inner Solar System, can originate from the Kuiper Belt or the more distant Oort Cloud and are also laden with water ice.

Hundreds of thousands of such icy bodies may occupy the Kuiper Belt, while there may be hundreds of billions or even trillions of them in the Oort Cloud.

Water in various forms is abundant in our Solar System.

Observations of other nascent and established systems suggest that they, too, contain water.

If space exploration requires water to be present in the locations we wish to visit, it seems our possible destinations are endless.

This article appeared in the December 2023 issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

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Space-Age Water Conservation Subheadline NASA’s need to conserve water in space has long supported terrestrial water-purification techniques

The more difficult a problem is for NASA, the more solutions it eventually produces for the rest of us.

Few challenges are more pressing for the space agency than the need for clean water. Water is heavy — much heavier than the liquid hydrogen and oxygen NASA uses for rocket fuel — and every pound launched into space costs thousands of dollars. So on the space station, nothing is wasted — sweat, urine, and even breath moisture are collected, purified, and recycled as drinking water. But despite its origins, the water astronauts drink is cleaner than what’s available to most people on Earth.

To achieve this, NASA has pushed the cutting edge of water purification since the agency’s early years. And most of these innovations have found plenty of use here on the ground, too, in homes and water bottles, in industrial settings, and in remote locations where safe drinking water is scarce. As the worldwide demand for fresh water grows, this technology becomes more essential every day, as it ensures that people have enough safe water to drink, treats polluted water, and eases the demand on natural aquifers.

These are just a few examples of NASA technology now cleaning water on Earth.

Shower like a Martian  

In one recent development, an unlikely partnership between NASA and a Swedish university — with the help of filter technology the space agency helped develop almost 20 years ago — led to the world’s first water-recycling shower.

In 2012, Mehrdad Mahdjoubi, then a master’s student in industrial design at Lund University in Sweden, traveled to Johnson Space Center as part of an annual program to learn about the challenges of designing habitats for astronauts. The focus was on a five-year Mars stay.

Current astronauts, short on water and gravity, take sponge baths, but Mahdjoubi thought spacefarers with feet planted on Martian ground would prefer a real shower. But water on Mars’ desert surface is still scarce, so Mahdjoubi came up with an idea for reusing the flow. “I’d have never thought about doing something like this if I didn’t have that NASA experience,” he says.

To rapidly purify and reuse water, he hit on an especially thorough water filtration technology developed in part with NASA funding, known as NanoCeram.

Other filters have micropores tiny enough to physically filter out bacteria and even viruses, but these are painfully slow. A material invented by Argonide Corporation, however, made up of positively charged microscopic alumina fibers, can remove virtually all contaminants, including bacteria and viruses, despite having significantly larger pores — allowing a much higher flow rate. The positive charge of the fibers attracts and traps microorganisms and other contaminants, which generally carry a negative charge. Activated carbon in the filter aids in snaring particulate, chemical, and soluble contaminants.

Under two Small Business Innovation Research contracts from Johnson in the early 2000s, Argonide optimized its nanofibers for strength and virus adhesion and built, tested, and validated full-scale filter models. Since then, other companies have used the filters in   water bottles ,   portable humanitarian units , and   industrial water purification . And now Mahdjoubi has incorporated the filter into a recirculating shower known as Oas — Swedish for “oasis” — built and marketed by his new company, Orbital Systems.

The shower starts with less than a gallon of water and circulates it at a rate of three to four gallons per minute, more flow than most conventional showers provide. The system checks water quality 20 times per second, and the most highly polluted water, such as shampoo rinse, is jettisoned and replaced. The rest goes through the NanoCeram filter and then is bombarded with ultraviolet light before being recirculated. The Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control has verified that the recycled water is cleaner than tap water.

And because the reused water is already warm, it takes minimal energy to heat it back to the target temperature.

“There’s a general assumption you can’t do anything about water conservation without compromising your life quality,” says Mahdjoubi. “But we don’t tell people to stop showering, and we don’t destroy their experience. We enhance it with a higher flow rate. The ability to save without sacrifice, I think, is the most important part of our value proposition.”

Orbital Systems, headquartered in Sweden with U.S. offices in Sausalito, California, has raised about $50 million in investments and employs 60 to 70 people.

The company has sold several thousand units, so far mostly to hotel chains and real estate developers, and the showers are becoming available to individual consumers in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany this year. Mahdjoubi plans to expand to North America, Asia, and beyond but first needs to enlist distributors and certify installers. In the longer term, he wants to enable an entire habitat that runs on closed loops, recycling as much and using as little water as possible, just as a Martian habitat would.

“As humans, we’re really good at innovating, but we tend to be quite complacent until we actually have to do it,” Mahdjoubi says. “Designing for Mars forces more creativity.”

Ancient Technology Enters the Space Age  

Likewise, NASA engineers had to get creative as soon as the Apollo missions required a long-term water supply. One technique they explored in those early days was the use of silver ions to neutralize bacteria and viruses.

Even then, the concept was not new. Silver has been used to preserve and purify food and beverages since ancient times, but scientists are still researching the best and safest ways to deploy the technique.

The ancients, of course, had no idea how it worked—that when positively charged silver ions dissolve into water or other substances, they bond with and disrupt the negatively charged cell membranes of bacteria and other microorganisms before entering them and wreaking general havoc. But as understanding has improved, so has technology for delivering the ions.

In the 1960s, Johnson, then known as the Manned Spacecraft Center, commissioned an electrolytic silver ion generator to purify water on the Apollo missions. The following decade, in the run-up to the space shuttle missions, the center sponsored a more advanced prototype.

The silver ion-based purifiers never flew on NASA missions, but here on Earth, they’ve given rise to filter systems for home faucets, pools, spas, boilers, hospitals, and more.

One product family with perhaps the most enduring success didn’t even get the technology directly from NASA.

In the 1970s, Arizona inventor Ray Ward requested a technical information package from NASA based on the silver ion system built for the shuttle, which he used to build a prototype tap-water filter. Ward went on to found the   Bon Del   and   Ambassador   lines of water filters, which became a $50 million-a-year business. Along the way he also got some help from water treatment company Ionics Inc.

That company, now known as Puronics   Water Systems , later used the NASA technology Ward had introduced it to as a starting point for a   water softener   that wouldn’t breed bacteria.

Today Puronics, headquartered in Livermore, California, sells several lines of whole-house units incorporating the technology, which it calls SilverShield, each with different features and price points. Silver particles in the devices’ filter beds prevent them from breeding bacteria.

Company CEO Scott Batiste says the home units with SilverShield remain the company’s core products, accounting for about 70 percent of its overall business, and the product line has been doing 15 to 20 percent more business each year lately.

“I think it’s a real testament to this technology that we’ve been using it since the late ’80s, early ’90s, and it’s still a growing product line,” he says. “I think NASA should be proud of that, and of course we’re excited about it.”

Using Nature’s R&D Lab  

One of the most remarkable — and possibly most effective — water-treatment technologies NASA has explored is a membrane embedded with the same natural proteins that transport water through the membranes of living cells. Known as aquaporins, these proteins are what allow plant roots to absorb water from soil and human kidneys to filter about 45 gallons of blood per day. They can transport water through cell membranes one molecule at a time, while rejecting other substances.

Now companies all over the world are looking at various ways these membranes can be used, including many pilot wastewater treatment projects, whether adding efficiency to existing wastewater treatment facilities or purifying wastewater that until now has gone untreated, polluting groundwater and waterways.

The concept has been pioneered by Danish company Aquaporin A/S, and when Ames Research Center learned what the company was trying to do in 2007, the center became the first paying customer. Ames and the European Space Agency tested the membranes on flights to the International Space Station.

In 2016, Aquaporin delivered its first commercial product, an   under-sink filter module for home use .

These operate through reverse osmosis, using pressure to push water through the filters. But the company had even bigger plans for the membranes in forward osmosis, a process that drives itself without any outside influence. With saltwater on one side of the membrane and wastewater on the other, thermodynamics compel the salt to distribute itself evenly throughout all the water in the system. But because salt can’t pass through the membrane, it draws the fresh water through from the other side, leaving only waste.

While forward osmosis is an old technique, the aquaporin proteins’ extremely high selectivity for water molecules gives Aquaporin A/S an advantage. “We have the highest rejection rates and the lowest reverse salt flux rates in the market,” says CEO Peter Holme Jensen. “This is why we can do stuff in forward osmosis that others can’t — because we extract water, and other forward-osmosis technologies extract water and a bit of something else.”

The company, based outside of Copenhagen, has now partnered with companies and other entities around the world on pilot projects or lab tests to try the membranes in almost 60 different forward-osmosis applications. About half of those projects are treating wastewater generated by a range of sources, from landfills to olive oil production to bus depot washing.

One of those is back at Ames, where NASA’s Sustainability Base, one of the federal government’s most environmentally friendly buildings, is trying out Aquaporin HFFO14 forward-osmosis modules for treating gray water — wastewater from sinks, drinking fountains, and other non-sewage sources. This pilot has been running since fall of 2019 and requires less energy and maintenance than the building’s previously existing gray water reclamation system while taking up far less space.

In one of the larger wastewater treatment pilots, Canadian start-up Forward Water Technologies opened a demonstration plant in Alberta last year, using Aquaporin filters to treat water hauled in from oil and gas drilling sites, among other industries.

But Aquaporin is taking particular aim at textile companies, which generate large amounts of highly concentrated wastewater. Most of these are in Asia, where many companies currently don’t treat their wastewater, leading to widespread pollution. Both consumer demand and “zero liquid discharge” requirements some governments are putting in place are changing that, so Aquaporin is supplying filters to Gradiant Corporation, a company that specializes in sustainable water treatment, for use in Asian textile mills. “We have a specific focus on the textile industry because consumers are asking for it,” says Holme Jensen.

Meanwhile, other businesses that do treat wastewater tend to be slow to adopt new technology. “Water companies take 9 to 13 years to adapt to new innovations. If we waited for them, we would go bankrupt,” says Holme Jensen.

But his company has found that some other industries — specifically the food and beverage industry and the field of hemodialysis — are more open to new ideas.

By extracting water in a cold concentration process that uses forward osmosis, companies can increase the alcohol content of beer, create highly concentrated foods, or turn semisolid foods into durable solids. Other techniques work but can change the flavor and texture. “When you do this with forward osmosis, you do it in the gentlest way possible, gently extracting water at room temperature,” Holme Jensen explains.

Between 20 and 30 food and beverage companies — many of them household names — are now running pilots with the company’s forward-osmosis modules, he notes, often with the goal of creating their own patented new products. “For us it was a little surprising.”

And in healthcare, forward osmosis has the potential to make dialysis portable, improving patients’ quality of life, he says. Dialysis patients often spend hours traveling to and from treatment three or four times a week, where they spend another three or four hours bedridden, creating a sedentary lifestyle.

This is partly because hemodialysis a massive water consumer. The process requires about 200 liters of water per treatment—all of which ends up as wastewater. If clean water were extracted from the waste and reused throughout the treatment, he says, dialysis could fit in a backpack.

“We’re testing forward osmosis in a closed water-recycling loop with a lot of players in dialysis,” Holme Jensen says. “Medical device companies understand and pick up on the technology because if you look at how a kidney works, it reuses water in a closed loop.”

And after all, the mechanism that makes that closed loop work is the aquaporin protein.

Mike DiCicco   Managing Editor

Water is one of Earth’s most precious resources. For many years, technology invented or supported by NASA for life-support systems in space has been used to both clean and conserve water on the blue planet. Credit: Getty Images

Orbital Systems’ Oas shower is the world’s first water-recirculating shower. It was inspired by a university’s partnership with NASA and is enabled by a filter technology NASA helped fund with an eye toward improving astronaut life-support systems. Credit: Orbital Systems

The combination of a NanoCeram filter, left, and an ultraviolet light lets the Oas shower purify and recycle all but the dirtiest water. Credit: Orbital Systems

Microscopic nanoalumina particles coat a glass fiber in NanoCeram filter technology. The positively charged particles attract and trap bacteria, viruses, metals, organic material, and other contaminants, such as the virus-sized silica particles seen here.

The Puronics Defender whole-house water conditioner uses silver-ion technology based on work NASA did in the run-ups to the Apollo and space shuttle missions. Positively charged silver ions neutralize bacteria in the unit’s filter beds. Credit: Advanced Cascade Water Systems Inc.

Carbon impregnated with silver ions forms the filter bed for most of Puronics’ product lines. Credit: Puronics Water System Inc.

In the gray water reclamation system at Ames Research Center’s Sustainability Base, the two beige Aquaporin HFFO14 forward-osmosis modules on the left have as much filtration capacity as the entire legacy system on the right. Credit: Aquaporin A/S

The water level of the Lake Mead reservoir behind Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona is chronically low due to years of drought and human demand for the water. As the human population continues to grow and fresh water sources shift or deplete, technology for cleaning and conserving water takes on greater importance. Credit: Getty Images

Related Stories

Ask an Explainer

How does sound travel through space.

Sound can't be carried in the empty vacuum of space because sound waves need a medium to vibrate through such as air or water. Until recently, we thought that since there is no air in space, that no sound could travel and that is still true but only up to a point. Space isn’t actually completely empty, there are large areas of gas and dust that do have the potential to carry sound waves . However, because the particles are so spread out, the sounds waves they produce are at such a low frequency, humans are incapable of hearing them. 

Cosmic currents: Preserving water quality for astronauts during space exploration

The International Space Station is an orbiting oasis of science and multicountry unity. On Nov. 9, the SpaceX Falcon rocket streaked skyward from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the International Space Station to investigate Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa — two microbial pathogens that could potentially pose a risk to astronauts and spaceflight systems due to the aggregation of these bacteria into sticky residues known as biofilms. Graphic by Jason Drees

On Nov. 9, the SpaceX Falcon rocket streaked skyward from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The rocket is on a commercial resupply mission dubbed CRS-2 SpX-29 . In addition to providing vital provisions for astronauts, SpX-29 carries a special biological sciences payload — a collaborative experiment developed by researchers at Arizona State University, Texas State University (TSU) and NASA to study how spaceflight affects bacterial growth and biofilm formation in life support systems on the ISS.

This experiment will provide scientists with information to help improve spacecraft habitat sustainability — specifically, protection of one of the most vital and vulnerable resources aboard any space vehicle: water.

The results from this study will provide critical insights for future spacecraft design, life support systems operations and crew health. Controlling biofilms, sticky communities of microbes that adhere to surfaces, is critical to protect the integrity of life support systems that provide water that is safe for drinking and personal hygiene.

The research also promises to shed light on the subtleties of bacterial behavior under reduced gravity conditions, as well as bacterial activities here on Earth, many of which remain poorly understood.

The two model pathogenic microorganisms featured in the study, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, have been detected in the past aboard the ISS, and both are associated with causing biofilms in water lines. Limiting or eliminating such bacterial pathogens from the water supply is essential for the health and safety of the crew as well as the integrity of mission-critical systems during spaceflight.

In a series of groundbreaking experiments, Cheryl Nickerson (co-principal investigator, ASU), Robert McLean (principal investigator, TSU) and their colleagues explore the risk of biofilm formation on stainless steel surfaces like those in the ISS water system, the potential for system corrosion, and the effectiveness of microbial disinfection in order to validate the results of their earlier spaceflight research .

“We are honored that NASA selected our team’s research for a rare reflight opportunity to the International Space Station,” Nickerson says. “This provides us the chance to validate the results from our previous flight study to understand and control the impact of the spaceflight environment on interactions between microbes and their habitat. It also reflects the importance of this work to NASA’s goals to protect human health and habitat sustainability in spaceflight.”

Cheryl Nickerson

Biodesign researcher Jiseon Yang, a contributor to the new mission, says, "Understanding the resilience of multispecies biofilms is important to ensure the health of astronauts and the durability of life support systems during extended space travel. This research aims not only to support the success of future deep space exploration but also provides profound implications for water treatment and corrosion control on Earth."

Nickerson is a professor with the School of Life Sciences and a researcher in the Biodesign Center for Fundamental and Applied Microbiomics at Arizona State University. 

Nickerson and McClean are joined by co-investigators Jennifer Barrila (assistant research professor, ASU) and C. Mark Ott (lead microbiologist, NASA Johnson Space Center), as well as Jiseon Yang (assistant research Professor, ASU), Richard Davis (ASU), Sandhya Gangaraju (ASU), Taylor Ranson (Texas State University), Starla Thornhill (NASA JSC) and Alistair McLean.

The project is a unique collaboration between ASU, TSU and NASA, and represents one of the few cases of joint funding between NASA’s Space Biology and Physical Sciences divisions.

Space germs and their threat

The new study, dubbed BAC (for bacterial adhesion and corrosion), will investigate two spaceflight hazards associated with microbially contaminated drinking water. The first is a health threat to the spaceflight crew, caused by E. coli and P. aeruginosa, both potent biofilm formers, which can cause disease at high enough concentrations. Since bacteria in biofilms are known to be resistant to disinfectants and antibiotics, it makes them difficult to remove and treat. This is important given that the rigors of spaceflight depress the immune system and some pathogens increase their disease-causing potential in spaceflight. This means that space travelers are potentially more susceptible to infectious disease.

The second concern is a safety threat, since microbial biofilms in water can be corrosive, degrading essential components and compromising spaceflight systems over time.

The project is a rare opportunity for researchers to double-check results of their previous BAC spaceflight study from 2020 and further fine-tune recommendations for ensuring continuous availability of safe water in space.  

As NASA and other organizations contemplate longer and more complicated endeavors in space, including return voyages to the moon and potential trips to Mars, the issue of water integrity during spaceflight is more pressing than ever. Any water-related mishap during extended spaceflight is a potentially lethal emergency.

Water: Vessel of illness and health

Here on Earth, contaminated water is the source of many life-threatening infectious diseases, including cholera, typhoid fever, enteric salmonellosis and dysentery. A complex infrastructure has been constructed to ensure the water we are exposed to is safe.

During spaceflight, however — far from the comfort of our home planet — the importance of safeguarding this precious resource becomes even more critical, and the challenges far more daunting.

Water resources in space are tracked carefully, including the recycling, purification and reuse of urine, wastewater and even sweat. Despite the extravagant lengths taken to ensure water aboard the ISS is safe, bacterial microbes are tenacious foes and will try to find a footing in water supplies or on material surfaces, where they can multiply. Different types of bacteria can join forces to create aggressive biofilms that are resistant to efforts to eradicate them with antimicrobials.

Lab in the sky

The experiments will track the growth of E. coli and P. aeruginosa within specially designed containers over a 117-day period aboard the ISS. The study will evaluate the formation of biofilms when the two pathogens are combined, which is relevant to how biofilms naturally develop in mixed populations. The tests will evaluate bacterial biofilm development during an early, middle and late phase over the course of the spaceflight.

Additionally, some of the biofilms will be exposed to silver disinfectant, to see how well this addition acts to limit growth and biofilm formation. The results will help guide NASA’s future decisions for microbial control of water resources using silver in the water systems as opposed to iodine, which is the current anti-microbial of choice.

The researchers will also examine biofilm formation on stainless-steel materials like those used in the ISS water system to see whether biofilm formation is acting to corrode them. A final evaluation explores bacterial gene expression during spaceflight, shedding light on how microgravity and other spaceflight conditions may be guiding bacterial behavior at the molecular level.

Challenges for safe water

Aboard the ISS, the Environmental Control and Life Support System uses an advanced process to purify water. This intricate procedure starts with a primary filtration step to sift out particles and detritus. Following this treatment, the water flows through layers of multi-filtration beds, which are designed to absorb and eliminate both organic and inorganic contaminants. The final stage eradicates volatile organic substances and exterminates any microorganisms present.

Even with such advanced life-support mechanisms in place to safeguard the water supply, bacterial populations have proven adept at circumventing these barriers, with some establishing resilient biofilms within the ISS water purification system.

Biofilms present significant global socioeconomic challenges, leading to extensive health and industrial issues, with financial repercussions soaring into billions of dollars annually here on Earth. They are responsible for clogging oil and chemical processing lines, contaminating invasive medical devices like stents, triggering infections and polluting water supplies. Furthermore, biofilms can aggressively corrode numerous materials, including stainless steel, which is a component of the ISS water system, thereby jeopardizing its integrity.

Although the ISS water harbors many of the same microorganisms that are present in terrestrial drinking water, conditions in space raise worries that these microorganisms could become more dangerous. One specific concern is related to the effects of microgravity — a factor that researchers from the same team have found to potentially increase the harmfulness and stress tolerance of certain pathogens.

Alterations of bacterial genes under spaceflight conditions could lead to a better understanding of how biofilms develop with translational potential to control biofilms on Earth and in space. Such investigations further underscore the value of space-based platforms for gaining new insights in life and health sciences.

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Venus has almost no water. A new study may reveal why

Illustration of what Venus may have looked like billions of years ago with water, left, and what Venus looks like today, right. (Credits: NASA; NASA/JPL-Caltech)  

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Planetary scientists at CU Boulder have discovered how Venus, Earth’s scalding and uninhabitable neighbor, became so dry.

The new study fills in a big gap in what the researchers call “the water story on Venus.” Using computer simulations, the team found that hydrogen atoms in the planet’s atmosphere go whizzing into space through a process known as “dissociative recombination”—causing Venus to lose roughly twice as much water every day compared to previous estimates.

In Venus' upper atmosphere, hydrogen atoms, orange, whiz into space, leaving behind carbon monoxide molecules, blue and purple. (Credit: Aurore Simonnet/LASP/CU Boulder)

The team  published their findings May 6 in the journal Nature. The results could help to explain what happens to water in a host of planets across the galaxy.

“Water is really important for life,” said Eryn Cangi, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and co-lead author of the new paper. “We need to understand the conditions that support liquid water in the universe, and that may have produced the very dry state of Venus today.”

Venus, she added, is positively parched. If you took all the water on Earth and spread it over the planet like jam on toast, you’d get a liquid layer roughly 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) deep. If you did the same thing on Venus, where all the water is trapped in the air, you’d wind up with only 3 centimeters (1.2 inches), barely enough to get your toes wet.

“Venus has 100,000 times less water than the Earth, even though it’s basically the same size and mass,” said Michael Chaffin, co-lead author of the study and a research scientist at LASP.

In the current study, the researchers used computer models to understand Venus as a gigantic chemistry laboratory, zooming in on the diverse reactions that occur in the planet’s swirling atmosphere. The group reports that a molecule called HCO+ (an ion made up of one atom each of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen) high in Venus’ atmosphere may be the culprit behind the planet’s escaping water. 

For Cangi, co-lead author of the research, the findings reveal new hints about why Venus, which probably once looked almost identical to Earth, is all but unrecognizable today.

“We’re trying to figure out what little changes occurred on each planet to drive them into these vastly different states,” said Cangi, who earned her doctorate in astrophysical and planetary sciences at CU Boulder in 2023.

Spilling the water

Venus, she noted, wasn’t always such a desert.

Scientists suspect that billions of year ago during the formation of Venus, the planet received about as much water as Earth. At some point, catastrophe struck. Clouds of carbon dioxide in Venus’ atmosphere kicked off the most powerful greenhouse effect in the solar system, eventually raising temperatures at the surface to a roasting 900 degrees Fahrenheit. In the process, all of Venus’ water evaporated into steam, and most drifted away into space.

But that ancient evaporation can’t explain why Venus is as dry as it is today, or how it continues to lose water to space.

“As an analogy, say I dumped out the water in my water bottle. There would still be a few droplets left,” Chaffin said.

On Venus, however, almost all of those remaining drops also disappeared. The culprit, according to the new work, is elusive HCO+.

Missions to Venus

Chaffin and Cangi explained that in planetary upper atmospheres, water mixes with carbon dioxide to form this molecule. In previous research, the researchers reported that HCO+ may be responsible for Mars losing a big chunk of its water.

Illustration of NASA's DAVINCI probe falling to the surface of Venus. (Credit: NASA GSFC visualization by CI Labs Michael Lentz and others)

Here’s how it works on Venus: HCO+ is produced constantly in the atmosphere, but individual ions don’t survive for long. Electrons in the atmosphere find these ions, and recombine to split the ions in two. In the process, hydrogen atoms zip away and may even escape into space entirely—robbing Venus of one of the two components of water.

In the new study, the group calculated that the only way to explain Venus’ dry state was if the planet hosted larger than expected volumes of HCO+ in its atmosphere. There is one twist to the team’s findings. Scientists have never observed HCO+ around Venus. Chaffin and Cangi suggest that’s because they’ve never had the instruments to properly look.

While dozens of missions have visited Mars in recent decades, far fewer spacecraft have traveled to the second planet from the sun. None have carried instruments capable of detecting the HCO+ that powers the team’s newly discovered escape route.

“One of the surprising conclusions of this work is that HCO+ should actually be among the most abundant ions in the Venus atmosphere,” Chaffin said.

In recent years, however, a growing number of scientists have set their sights on Venus. NASA’s planned Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) mission, for example, will drop a probe through the planet’s atmosphere all the way to the surface. It’s scheduled to launch by the end of the decade.

DAVINCI won’t be able to detect HCO+, either, but the researchers are hopeful that a future mission might—revealing another key piece of the story of water on Venus.

“There haven’t been many missions to Venus,” Cangi said. “But newly planned missions will leverage decades of collective experience and a flourishing interest in Venus to explore the extremes of planetary atmospheres, evolution and habitability.”

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No, you cannot hear any sounds in near-empty regions of space. Sound travels through the vibration of atoms and molecules in a medium (such as air or water). In space, where there is no air, sound has no way to travel.

What Is Groundwater? And How Do We Track It From Space?

What is groundwater.

Did you know that water can be found below your feet? Not just when you are standing in the ocean or on a frozen lake, but deep within the ground.

After it rains or snows, water sinks down through the layers of dirt, rocks, and sand in the ground. In certain places, the ground allows enough water to travel through to create a pool of water underground. This is groundwater. The water table is a term for the part of the groundwater that is closest to the surface. Credit: NASA/JPL Caltech

Groundwater is water found below the surface of the land. As part of the water cycle , water falls to Earth's surface when it rains or snows. Then that water is soaked up by the soil. As it sinks through the ground, it fills in spaces between the rocks, dirt, and sand.

In certain places, enough water can seep through that a pool of water forms underground. This is called an aquifer. Aquifers fill up over time from rain and from snow melting at the surface.

To get the groundwater they need, people dig deep holes called wells. The groundwater seeps into the well through the rocks. Then, people pump it to the surface for drinking and other uses.

To have water to drink, people sometimes dig deep holes in the ground to reach the groundwater. These are called wells. Credit: NASA/JPL Caltech

Groundwater is a very important natural resource. In the United States, it provides around 40 percent of the water needed for people and farms. For half of the people in the world, aquifers provide the main source of water.

Will Groundwater Change with Climate Change?

Since human-caused climate change raises air temperatures and affects rainfall, it also affects groundwater. Warmer temperatures can lead to people using more groundwater. This leaves less water in the ground. The amount of rain can change the amount of groundwater, too. If there is less rain, then there is less water to refill the groundwater. Warmer temperatures also lead to more evaporation. Evaporation is when liquid water changes into a gas. This means there is less water that can sink down into the ground.

Sea levels are measured around the world with satellites in space and other instruments in the water. Over time, they have shown us that as the planet warms, sea levels are rising. Credit: NASA/JPL Caltech

Rising sea levels also matter. As Earth warms up, it warms the ocean, too. This makes ocean water expand, or take up more space, which causes the ocean to rise. Warmer temperatures also melt land ice in places like Greenland and Antarctica. This adds more water to the ocean and makes it rise.

In some places, rising seas mean that salty ocean water can make its way through the rocks and sand near the coast and into the fresh groundwater. If enough salt water makes it through, then the groundwater may not be drinkable.

Can We Track Groundwater from Space?

Yes, we can! NASA uses satellites to track changes in groundwater from space. For example, the GRACE-FO satellites look at how water moves on and below Earth’s surface by measuring very small changes in gravity .

If there is less groundwater in a place, then it will have slightly less gravity. That’s because how much gravity something has depends on how much of it there is, known as mass. Satellites like GRACE-FO can measure these small changes in gravity when compared to the very large Earth. This gives scientists information about how groundwater is changing over time.

It’s so cool that we can keep an eye on groundwater from space! This means we can help people all over the world know about their local groundwater supply. This information helps them make smart choices about using water.

Related NASA Missions

How Does the Tiny Waterbear Survive in Outer Space?

A special adaptation allows the tiny animal known as the tardigrade to curl up into a dry, lifeless ball and survive for decades

Joseph Stromberg

The humble tardigrade , also known as a “waterbear” or “moss piglet,” is an aquatic eight-legged animal that typically grows no longer than one millimeter in length. Most tardigrades (there are more than 1,000 identified species) have a fairly humdrum existence, living out their days on a moist piece of moss or in the sediment at the bottom of a lake and feeding on bacteria or plant life.

Some tardigrades, though, live on the wild side. Scientists have found the tiny creatures surviving in boiling hot springs and buried under layers of ice on Himalayan mountaintops. Experiments have shown that they can survive being frozen at -328 degrees Fahrenheit or heated to more than 300 degrees F, are capable of withstanding pressures as powerful as 6000 times that of the atmosphere and can survive radiation doses that are thousands of times stronger than what would be fatal for a human.

In 2007, a group of European researchers pushed the resilience of this extraordinary animal even further, exposing a sample of dehydrated tardigrades to the vacuum and solar radiation of outer space for 10 full days. When the specimens were returned to earth and rehydrated, 68 percent of those that were shielded from the radiation survived, and even a handful of those with no radiation protection came back to life and produced viable offspring.

How do the little tardigrades survive such a harsh environment? Although amateur tardigrade enthusiast Mike Shaw recently made waves by postulating that the animals may be equipped to survive in outer space because they originally came from other planets, scientists are certain that the creatures developed their uncommon toughness here on earth.

It turns out that the adaptation that allows tardigrades to live through these trying conditions is their ability to enter a dehydrated state that closely resembles death. When encountering environmental stresses, a tardigrade curls up into a dry, lifeless ball called a tun , reducing its metabolic activity to as low as .01 percent of normal levels. In order to do so, tardigrades produce trehalose, a special protective sugar that forms a gel-like medium that suspends and preserves the organelles and membranes that make up the animal’s cells.

As a tun, a tardigrade can survive for decades or even longer ; once immersed in water, the body returns to a normal metabolic state over the course of a few hours. One group of dehydrated tardigrades was reportedly taken from a museum sample of dried moss that was more than 100 years old and brought back to life. The longer a tardigrade persists in a dehydrated state, though, the lower the chances it will successfully be revived afterward.

The creatures are also capable of other types of transformations that allow them to survive in difficult conditions. If the oxygen content of their water medium drops too low for them to extract enough of the gas for respiration, they stretch out into a long, relaxed state, in which their metabolic rate is also reduced but the relaxation of their muscles allows as much water and oxygen to enter their cells as possible. If the temperature of a tardigrade’s environment falls below freezing, it forms a special cold-resistant tun, with molecules that prevent the formation of large ice crystals that could damage cell membranes.

This remarkably wide range of survival techniques leads to an obvious question: If tardigrades aren’t from outer space, just what barren environment did they actually evolve in? Although the exact placement of tardigrades in the evolutionary tree of life is still debated, scientists believe they are most closely related to arthropods, a phylum of animals with hard protective exoskeletons and that includes insects and crustaceans.

Unlike most arthropods, however, the hardy species of tardigrades likely evolved to survive in especially volatile environments, such as lakes that intermittently freeze or dry up. As a result, they’re capable of surviving the rigors of outer space, more perilous than any environment on earth. And for all we know about the tardigrades, you’d have to assume—if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.

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Joseph Stromberg | | READ MORE

Joseph Stromberg was previously a digital reporter for Smithsonian .

Venus is losing water faster than previously thought – here’s what that could mean for the early planet’s habitability

Research Scientist in Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

Disclosure statement

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant DGE 1650115. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

University of Colorado provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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Today, the atmosphere of our neighbor planet Venus is as hot as a pizza oven and drier than the driest desert on Earth – but it wasn’t always that way.

Billions of years ago, Venus had as much water as Earth does today . If that water was ever liquid, Venus may have once been habitable .

Over time, that water has nearly all been lost. Figuring out how, when and why Venus lost its water helps planetary scientists like me understand what makes a planet habitable — or what can make a habitable planet transform into an uninhabitable world.

Scientists have theories explaining why most of that water disappeared, but more water has disappeared than they predicted.

In a May 2024 study , my colleagues and I revealed a new water removal process that has gone unnoticed for decades, but could explain this water loss mystery.

Energy balance and early loss of water

The solar system has a habitable zone – a narrow ring around the Sun in which planets can have liquid water on their surface. Earth is in the middle, Mars is outside on the too-cold side, and Venus is outside on the too-hot side. Where a planet sits on this habitability spectrum depends on how much energy the planet gets from the Sun, as well as how much energy the planet radiates away.

The theory of how most of Venus’ water loss occurred is tied to this energy balance. On early Venus, sunlight broke up water in its atmosphere into hydrogen and oxygen. Atmospheric hydrogen heats up a planet — like having too many blankets on the bed in summer.

When the planet gets too hot, it throws off the blanket: the hydrogen escapes in a flow out to space, a process called hydrodynamic escape . This process removed one of the key ingredients for water from Venus. It’s not known exactly when this process occurred, but it was likely within the first billion years or so.

Hydrodynamic escape stopped after most hydrogen was removed, but a little bit of hydrogen was left behind. It’s like dumping out a water bottle – there will still be a few drops left at the bottom. These leftover drops can’t escape in the same way. There must be some other process still at work on Venus that continues to remove hydrogen.

Little reactions can make a big difference

Our new study reveals that an overlooked chemical reaction in Venus’ atmosphere can produce enough escaping hydrogen to close the gap between the expected and observed water loss.

Here’s how it works. In the atmosphere, gaseous HCO⁺ molecules, which are made up of one atom each of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen and have a positive charge, combine with negatively charged electrons, since opposites attract.

But when the HCO⁺ and the electrons react, the HCO⁺ breaks up into a neutral carbon monoxide molecule, CO, and a hydrogen atom, H. This process energizes the hydrogen atom, which can then exceed the planet’s escape velocity and escape to space. The whole reaction is called HCO⁺ dissociative recombination, but we like to call it DR for short.

Water is the original source of hydrogen on Venus, so DR effectively dries out the planet. DR has likely happened throughout the history of Venus, and our work shows it probably still continues into the present day. It doubles the amount of hydrogen escape previously calculated by planetary scientists, upending our understanding of present-day hydrogen escape on Venus.

Understanding Venus with data, models and Mars

To study DR on Venus we used both computer modeling and data analysis.

The modeling actually began as a Mars project. My Ph.D. research involved exploring what sort of conditions made planets habitable for life. Mars also used to have water , though less than Venus, and also lost most of it to space.

To understand martian hydrogen escape, I developed a computational model of the Mars atmosphere that simulates Mars’ atmospheric chemistry. Despite being very different planets, Mars and Venus actually have similar upper atmospheres, so my colleagues and I were able to extend the model to Venus.

We found that HCO⁺ dissociative recombination produces lots of escaping hydrogen in both planets’ atmospheres, which agreed with measurements taken by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, mission , a satellite orbiting Mars.

Having data collected in Venus’ atmosphere to back up the model would be valuable, but previous missions to Venus haven’t measured HCO⁺ – not because it’s not there, but because they weren’t designed to detect it. They did, however, measure the reactants that produce HCO⁺ in Venus’ atmosphere.

By analyzing measurements made by Pioneer Venus , a combination orbiter and probe mission that studied Venus from 1978-1992, and using our knowledge of chemistry, we demonstrated that HCO⁺ should be present in the atmosphere in similar amounts to our model.

Follow the water

Our work has filled in a piece of the puzzle of how water is lost from planets, which affects how habitable a planet is for life. We’ve learned that water loss happens not just in one fell swoop, but over time through a combination of methods.

Faster hydrogen loss today via DR means that less time is required overall to remove the remaining water from Venus. This means that if oceans were ever present on early Venus, they could have been present for longer than scientists thought before water loss through hydrodynamic escape and DR started. This would provide more time for possible life to arise. Our results don’t mean oceans or life were definitely present, though – answering that question will require lots more science over many years.

There is also a need for new Venus missions and observations. Future Venus missions will provide some atmospheric measurements, but they won’t focus on the upper atmosphere where most HCO⁺ dissociative recombination takes place. A future Venus upper atmosphere mission, similar to the MAVEN mission at Mars, could vastly expand everyone’s knowledge of how terrestrial planets’ atmospheres form and evolve over time.

With the technological advancements of recent decades and a flourishing new interest in Venus, now is an excellent time to turn our eyes toward Earth’s sister planet.

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Jupiter Facts

Jupiter is a world of extremes. It's the largest planet in our solar system – if it were a hollow shell, 1,000 Earths could fit inside. It's also the oldest planet, forming from the dust and gases left over from the Sun's formation 4.5 billion years ago. But it has the shortest day in the solar system, taking only 10.5 hours to spin around once on its axis.

Introduction

Jupiter's signature stripes and swirls are actually cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. The dark orange stripes are called belts, while the lighter bands are called zones, and they flow east and west in opposite directions. Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot is a giant storm bigger than Earth that has raged for hundreds of years.

The king of planets was named for Jupiter, king of the gods in Roman mythology. Most of its moons are also named for mythological characters, figures associated with Jupiter or his Greek counterpart, Zeus.

Jupiter, being the biggest planet, gets its name from the king of the ancient Roman gods.

Potential for Life

Jupiter’s environment is probably not conducive to life as we know it. The temperatures, pressures, and materials that characterize this planet are most likely too extreme and volatile for organisms to adapt to.

While planet Jupiter is an unlikely place for living things to take hold, the same is not true of some of its many moons. Europa is one of the likeliest places to find life elsewhere in our solar system. There is evidence of a vast ocean just beneath its icy crust, where life could possibly be supported.

Size and Distance

With a radius of 43,440.7 miles (69,911 kilometers), Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth. If Earth were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be about as big as a basketball.

From an average distance of 484 million miles (778 million kilometers), Jupiter is 5.2 astronomical units away from the Sun. One astronomical unit (abbreviated as AU), is the distance from the Sun to Earth. From this distance, it takes sunlight 43 minutes to travel from the Sun to Jupiter.

Orbit and Rotation

Jupiter has the shortest day in the solar system. One day on Jupiter takes only about 10 hours (the time it takes for Jupiter to rotate or spin around once), and Jupiter makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Jovian time) in about 12 Earth years (4,333 Earth days).

Its equator is tilted with respect to its orbital path around the Sun by just 3 degrees. This means Jupiter spins nearly upright and does not have seasons as extreme as other planets do.

With four large moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms a kind of miniature solar system.

Jupiter has 95 moons that are officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union. The four largest moons – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto – were first observed by the astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610 using an early version of the telescope. These four moons are known today as the Galilean satellites, and they're some of the most fascinating destinations in our solar system.

Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system (even bigger than the planet Mercury). Callisto’s very few small craters indicate a small degree of current surface activity. A liquid-water ocean with the ingredients for life may lie beneath the frozen crust of Europa, the target of NASA's Europa Clipper mission slated to launch in 2024.

› More on Jupiter's Moons

Discovered in 1979 by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, Jupiter's rings were a surprise. The rings are composed of small, dark particles, and they are difficult to see except when backlit by the Sun. Data from the Galileo spacecraft indicate that Jupiter's ring system may be formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's small innermost moons.

Jupiter took shape along with rest of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. Gravity pulled swirling gas and dust together to form this gas giant. Jupiter took most of the mass left over after the formation of the Sun, ending up with more than twice the combined material of the other bodies in the solar system. In fact, Jupiter has the same ingredients as a star, but it did not grow massive enough to ignite.

About 4 billion years ago, Jupiter settled into its current position in the outer solar system, where it is the fifth planet from the Sun.

The composition of Jupiter is similar to that of the Sun – mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the atmosphere, pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid. This gives Jupiter the largest ocean in the solar system – an ocean made of hydrogen instead of water. Scientists think that, at depths perhaps halfway to the planet's center, the pressure becomes so great that electrons are squeezed off the hydrogen atoms, making the liquid electrically conducting like metal. Jupiter's fast rotation is thought to drive electrical currents in this region, with the spinning of the liquid metallic hydrogen acting like a dynamo, generating the planet's powerful magnetic field.

Deeper down, Jupiter's central core had long been a mystery. Scientists theorized Jupiter was a mostly homogeneous mix of hydrogen and helium gases, surrounding a small, solid core of heavier elements – ice, rock, and metal formed from debris and small objects swirling around that area of the embryonic solar system 4 billion years ago.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft, measuring Jupiter’s gravity and magnetic field, found data suggesting the core is much larger than expected, and not solid. Instead, it’s partially dissolved, with no clear separation from the metallic hydrogen around it, leading researchers to describe the core as dilute, or “fuzzy.”

As a gas giant, Jupiter doesn’t have a true surface. The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Jupiter, it wouldn’t be able to fly through unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet crush, melt, and vaporize spacecraft trying to fly into the planet.

Jupiter's appearance is a tapestry of colorful stripes and spots – the cloud bands that encircle the planet, and the cyclonic storms dotting it from pole to pole. The gas planet likely has three distinct cloud layers in its "skies" that, taken together, span about 44 miles (71 kilometers). The top cloud is probably made of ammonia ice, while the middle layer is likely made of ammonium hydrosulfide crystals. The innermost layer may be made of water ice and vapor.

The vivid colors you see in thick bands across Jupiter may be plumes of sulfur and phosphorus-containing gases rising from the planet's warmer interior. Jupiter's fast rotation – spinning once every 10 hours – creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones across long stretches.

With no solid surface to slow them down, Jupiter's spots can persist for many years. Stormy Jupiter is swept by over a dozen prevailing winds, some reaching up to 335 miles per hour (539 kilometers per hour) at the equator. The Great Red Spot, a swirling oval of clouds twice as wide as Earth, has been observed on the giant planet for more than 300 years. More recently, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot, about half the size of its larger cousin.

Findings from NASA’s Juno probe released in October 2021 provide a fuller picture of what’s going on below those clouds. Data from Juno shows that Jupiter’s cyclones are warmer on top, with lower atmospheric densities, while they are colder at the bottom, with higher densities. Anticyclones, which rotate in the opposite direction, are colder at the top but warmer at the bottom.

The findings also indicate these storms are far taller than expected, with some extending 60 miles (100 kilometers) below the cloud tops and others, including the Great Red Spot, extending over 200 miles (350 kilometers). This surprising discovery demonstrates that the vortices cover regions beyond those where water condenses and clouds form, below the depth where sunlight warms the atmosphere.

The height and size of the Great Red Spot mean the concentration of atmospheric mass within the storm potentially could be detectable by instruments studying Jupiter’s gravity field. Two close Juno flybys over Jupiter’s most famous spot provided the opportunity to search for the storm’s gravity signature and complement the other results on its depth.

With their gravity data, the Juno team was able to constrain the extent of the Great Red Spot to a depth of about 300 miles (500 kilometers) below the cloud tops.

Belts and Zones In addition to cyclones and anticyclones, Jupiter is known for its distinctive belts and zones – white and reddish bands of clouds that wrap around the planet. Strong east-west winds moving in opposite directions separate the bands. Juno previously discovered that these winds, or jet streams, reach depths of about 2,000 miles (roughly 3,200 kilometers). Researchers are still trying to solve the mystery of how the jet streams form. Data collected by Juno during multiple passes reveal one possible clue: that the atmosphere’s ammonia gas travels up and down in remarkable alignment with the observed jet streams.

Juno’s data also shows that the belts and zones undergo a transition around 40 miles (65 kilometers) beneath Jupiter’s water clouds. At shallow depths, Jupiter’s belts are brighter in microwave light than the neighboring zones. But at deeper levels, below the water clouds, the opposite is true – which reveals a similarity to our oceans.

Polar Cyclones Juno previously discovered polygonal arrangements of giant cyclonic storms at both of Jupiter’s poles – eight arranged in an octagonal pattern in the north and five arranged in a pentagonal pattern in the south. Over time, mission scientists determined these atmospheric phenomena are extremely resilient, remaining in the same location.

Juno data also indicates that, like hurricanes on Earth, these cyclones want to move poleward, but cyclones located at the center of each pole push them back. This balance explains where the cyclones reside and the different numbers at each pole.

Magnetosphere

The Jovian magnetosphere is the region of space influenced by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field. It balloons 600,000 to 2 million miles (1 to 3 million kilometers) toward the Sun (seven to 21 times the diameter of Jupiter itself) and tapers into a tadpole-shaped tail extending more than 600 million miles (1 billion kilometers) behind Jupiter, as far as Saturn's orbit. Jupiter's enormous magnetic field is 16 to 54 times as powerful as that of the Earth. It rotates with the planet and sweeps up particles that have an electric charge. Near the planet, the magnetic field traps swarms of charged particles and accelerates them to very high energies, creating intense radiation that bombards the innermost moons and can damage spacecraft.

Jupiter's magnetic field also causes some of the solar system's most spectacular aurorae at the planet's poles.

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Nasa, grad students work to find better way to recycle water in space, nasa armstrong public affairs specialist.

Read this feature in Spanish here .

In space, water is precious. Recycling water efficiently is vital for astronauts aboard the International Space Station and those who will one day travel to the Moon and Mars.

For years, the space station has recycled urine to reduce space launches’ need to replenish water supplies. While recycling has been successful, a team of University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras researchers are working on making a more efficient process and gaining more usable water at a lower cost. The work is a collaboration with NASA by doctoral students Liz Santiago-Martoral and Alondra Rodriguez-Rolon, with the mentorship of professor Eduardo Nicolau.

Their research involves lyotropic liquid crystals used in cosmetic gels to retain moisture, and the urease enzyme, found in algae and plants. A mixture of soap and water is an example of what lyotropic liquid crystals do (lyo- “dissolve” and tropic – “change”). 

The method uses a membrane, a barrier that allows some substance in while blocking others, coated with lyotropic liquid crystal gel that serves as the host for the urease enzyme to break down the urea.

A salt solution on the membrane’s other side creates a change in pressure, pulling urine through the membrane. As the urine goes through the membrane, the urease enzyme breaks it into its components – water, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.

“The good thing is that we were not only planning to obtain clean water, but we also want to use those byproducts for energy storage and energy production,” said Santiago-Martoral. “You don’t have to clean as much because bio-membranes tend to be self-cleaning. They can regenerate themselves in case of some disruption in their structure.”

Such a system would require less energy and mechanical force.

The team works on a small-scale system, tinkering with the design, looking at issues like providing a better environment for the enzymes and the size of the membranes, as well as incorporating lessons learned from astronauts who experimented in zero-gravity.

“There’s still a lot of troubleshooting that needs to be done in order to provide a large-scale system that can be implemented into the ISS,” Santiago-Martoral said.

Linking Students, Faculty with NASA

The research was spurred by NASA’s MUREP (Minority University Research and Education Project) Institutional Research Opportunity, or MIRO, program administered by the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. MUREP, provides competitive awards to minority-serving institutions to conduct research aligned with NASA missions.

The partnership with NASA provides opportunities for faculty and students, including fellowships, other grant program awards, and internships, as well as a chance for sending experiments on zero-gravity flights and to the International Space Station.

The collaboration with NASA provides validation for the university’s research center, showing it has the capabilities, the resources, and the environment to meet the agency’s goals, Nicolau said.

 “For me, it has really helped my career grow tremendously,” Nicolau said. “When I became a professor, to me it was a natural step to continue looking for those opportunities for my students that I had. It’s that small seed you’re planting with our students, giving them the opportunity they need to be successful.”

In 2019, Nicolau led the successful effort to win additional MIRO funding, creating the Puerto Rico Space Partnership for Research Innovation and Training, or PR-SPRinT. That center’s goal is to provide opportunities for students and faculty to conduct research related to NASA mission goals.

Rodriguez-Rolon is a MUREP Fellow, a program aimed at providing STEM experience while directly contributing to the agency’s mission. She is interested in water remediation and its potential applications for the Artemis program and other missions to the Moon and beyond.

“I want to inspire girls to want to be in science,” Rodriguez-Rolon said. “It’s an honor to represent the university’s NASA center, to represent women in chemistry, and the Latin women at NASA.”

MIRO helped the university provide space for students, especially from disadvantaged communities, to pursue careers in science, technology, and engineering. It also inspired them to pursue higher education degrees, Santiago-Martoral said.

“It has been a growth experience and I am very grateful for it,” Santiago-Martoral said. “It has widened my view of what I want as a chemist and a researcher. I have a greater desire to work with an agency that provides me with creativity in terms of my work and research.”

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Does Light Travel Forever?

Most recent answer: 01/23/2013

Hi Raja, Good question. First, let's think about why sound does not travel forever. Sound cannot travel through empty space; it is carried by vibrations in a material, or medium (like air, steel, water, wood, etc). As the particles in the medium vibrate, energy is lost to heat, viscous processes, and molecular motion. So, the sound wave gets smaller and smaller until it disappears. In contrast, light waves can travel through a vacuum, and do not require a medium. In empty space, the wave does not dissipate (grow smaller) no matter how far it travels, because the wave is not interacting with anything else. This is why light from distant stars can travel through space for billions of light-years and still reach us on earth. However, light can also travel within some materials, like glass and water. In this case, some light is absorbed and lost as heat, just like sound. So, underwater, or in our atmosphere, light will only travel some finite range (which is different depending on the properties of the material it travels through). There is one more aspect of wave travel to consider, which applies to both sound and light waves. As a wave travels from a source, it propagates outward in all directions. Therefore, it fills a space given approximately by the surface area of a sphere. This area increases by the square of the distance R from the source; since the wave fills up all this space, its intensity decreases by R squared. This effect just means that the light/sound source will appear dimmer if we are farther away from it, since we don't collect all the light it emits. For example, light from a distant star travels outward in a giant sphere. Only one tiny patch of this sphere of light actually hits our eyes, which is why stars don't blind us! David Schmid

(published on 01/23/2013)

Follow-Up #1: How far does light go?

Light just keeps going and going until it bumps into something.  Then it can either be reflected or absorbed.  Astronomers have detected some light that has been traveling for more that 12 billion years, close to the age of the universe.   

Light has some interesting properties.   It comes in lumps called photons.  These photons carry energy and momentum in specific amounts related to the color of the light.  There is much to learned about light.   I suggest you log in to our website and type  LIGHT into the search box.   Lots of interesting stuff there.

To answer your previous question "Can light go into a black hole?" ,  the answer is yes.

(published on 12/03/2015)

Follow-Up #2: less than one photon?

Certainly you can run the ouput of a single-photon source through a half-silvered mirror, and get a sort of half-ghost of the photon in two places. If you put ordinary photon detectors in those places, however, each will either detect zero or one. For each source photon, you'll get at most one of the detectors to find it. How does the half-ghost at the other one know whether it's detectably there or not? The name of that mystery is "quantum entanglement". At some level we don't really know the answer.

(published on 02/04/2016)

Follow-Up #3: stars too far away to see?

Most stars are too far for us to see them as individual stars even with our best telescopes. Still, we can get light from them, mixed with light from other stars. If our understanding of the universe is at all right, there are also stars that once were visible from here but now are outside our horizon so no light from them reaches us. It's probable that there are many more stars outside our horizon than inside, maybe infinitely more. It's hard to check, however, what's happening outside our horizon! It's even hard to define what we mean by "now" for things outside the horizon.

(published on 07/22/2016)

Follow-Up #4: light going out to space

Certainly ordinary light travels out to space. That's how spy cameras and such can take pictures of things here on the Earth's surface.

(published on 09/01/2016)

Follow-Up #5: end of the universe?

We don't think there's any "end" in the sense of some spatial boundary. Unless something changes drastically, there also won't be an end in time. The expansion looks like it will go on forever. So that wouldn't give a maximum range.

(published on 03/26/2017)

Follow-Up #6: seeing black holes

In principle a well-aimed beam would loop around the outside of the black hole and return to Earth. There aren't any black holes close enough to make this practical. Instead the bending of light by black holes is observed by their lensing effect on light coming from more distant objects.

The amazing gravitational wave signals observed from merging black holes provide even more direct and convincing proof that black holes exist and follow the laws of General Relativity.

(published on 01/29/2018)

Follow-up on this answer

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The huge solar storm is keeping power grid and satellite operators on edge

Geoff Brumfiel

Willem Marx

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of solar flares early Saturday afternoon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there have been measurable effects and impacts from the geomagnetic storm. Solar Dynamics Observatory hide caption

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of solar flares early Saturday afternoon. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there have been measurable effects and impacts from the geomagnetic storm.

Planet Earth is getting rocked by the biggest solar storm in decades – and the potential effects have those people in charge of power grids, communications systems and satellites on edge.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there have been measurable effects and impacts from the geomagnetic storm that has been visible as aurora across vast swathes of the Northern Hemisphere. So far though, NOAA has seen no reports of major damage.

The Picture Show

Photos: see the northern lights from rare, solar storm.

There has been some degradation and loss to communication systems that rely on high-frequency radio waves, NOAA told NPR, as well as some preliminary indications of irregularities in power systems.

"Simply put, the power grid operators have been busy since yesterday working to keep proper, regulated current flowing without disruption," said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator for the Boulder, Co.-based Space Weather Prediction Center at NOAA.

NOAA Issues First Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch Since 2005

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"Satellite operators are also busy monitoring spacecraft health due to the S1-S2 storm taking place along with the severe-extreme geomagnetic storm that continues even now," Dahl added, saying some GPS systems have struggled to lock locations and offered incorrect positions.

NOAA's GOES-16 satellite captured a flare erupting occurred around 2 p.m. EDT on May 9, 2024.

As NOAA had warned late Friday, the Earth has been experiencing a G5, or "Extreme," geomagnetic storm . It's the first G5 storm to hit the planet since 2003, when a similar event temporarily knocked out power in part of Sweden and damaged electrical transformers in South Africa.

The NOAA center predicted that this current storm could induce auroras visible as far south as Northern California and Alabama.

Extreme (G5) geomagnetic conditions have been observed! pic.twitter.com/qLsC8GbWus — NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (@NWSSWPC) May 10, 2024

Around the world on social media, posters put up photos of bright auroras visible in Russia , Scandinavia , the United Kingdom and continental Europe . Some reported seeing the aurora as far south as Mallorca, Spain .

The source of the solar storm is a cluster of sunspots on the sun's surface that is 17 times the diameter of the Earth. The spots are filled with tangled magnetic fields that can act as slingshots, throwing huge quantities of charged particles towards our planet. These events, known as coronal mass ejections, become more common during the peak of the Sun's 11-year solar cycle.

A powerful solar storm is bringing northern lights to unusual places

Usually, they miss the Earth, but this time, NOAA says several have headed directly toward our planet, and the agency predicted that several waves of flares will continue to slam into the Earth over the next few days.

While the storm has proven to be large, predicting the effects from such incidents can be difficult, Dahl said.

Shocking problems

The most disruptive solar storm ever recorded came in 1859. Known as the "Carrington Event," it generated shimmering auroras that were visible as far south as Mexico and Hawaii. It also fried telegraph systems throughout Europe and North America.

Stronger activity on the sun could bring more displays of the northern lights in 2024

While this geomagnetic storm will not be as strong, the world has grown more reliant on electronics and electrical systems. Depending on the orientation of the storm's magnetic field, it could induce unexpected electrical currents in long-distance power lines — those currents could cause safety systems to flip, triggering temporary power outages in some areas.

my cat just experienced the aurora borealis, one of the world's most radiant natural phenomena... and she doesn't care pic.twitter.com/Ee74FpWHFm — PJ (@kickthepj) May 10, 2024

The storm is also likely to disrupt the ionosphere, a section of Earth's atmosphere filled with charged particles. Some long-distance radio transmissions use the ionosphere to "bounce" signals around the globe, and those signals will likely be disrupted. The particles may also refract and otherwise scramble signals from the global positioning system, according to Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist with NOAA. Those effects can linger for a few days after the storm.

Like Dahl, Steenburgh said it's unclear just how bad the disruptions will be. While we are more dependent than ever on GPS, there are also more satellites in orbit. Moreover, the anomalies from the storm are constantly shifting through the ionosphere like ripples in a pool. "Outages, with any luck, should not be prolonged," Steenburgh said.

What Causes The Northern Lights? Scientists Finally Know For Sure

The radiation from the storm could have other undesirable effects. At high altitudes, it could damage satellites, while at low altitudes, it's likely to increase atmospheric drag, causing some satellites to sink toward the Earth.

The changes to orbits wreak havoc, warns Tuija Pulkkinen, chair of the department of climate and space sciences at the University of Michigan. Since the last solar maximum, companies such as SpaceX have launched thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit. Those satellites will now see their orbits unexpectedly changed.

"There's a lot of companies that haven't seen these kind of space weather effects before," she says.

The International Space Station lies within Earth's magnetosphere, so its astronauts should be mostly protected, Steenburgh says.

In a statement, NASA said that astronauts would not take additional measures to protect themselves. "NASA completed a thorough analysis of recent space weather activity and determined it posed no risk to the crew aboard the International Space Station and no additional precautionary measures are needed," the agency said late Friday.

People visit St Mary's lighthouse in Whitley Bay to see the aurora borealis on Friday in Whitley Bay, England. Ian Forsyth/Getty Images hide caption

People visit St Mary's lighthouse in Whitley Bay to see the aurora borealis on Friday in Whitley Bay, England.

While this storm will undoubtedly keep satellite operators and utilities busy over the next few days, individuals don't really need to do much to get ready.

"As far as what the general public should be doing, hopefully they're not having to do anything," Dahl said. "Weather permitting, they may be visible again tonight." He advised that the largest problem could be a brief blackout, so keeping some flashlights and a radio handy might prove helpful.

I took these photos near Ranfurly in Central Otago, New Zealand. Anyone can use them please spread far and wide. :-) https://t.co/NUWpLiqY2S — Dr Andrew Dickson reform/ACC (@AndrewDickson13) May 10, 2024

And don't forget to go outside and look up, adds Steenburgh. This event's aurora is visible much further south than usual.

A faint aurora can be detected by a modern cell phone camera, he adds, so even if you can't see it with your eyes, try taking a photo of the sky.

The aurora "is really the gift from space weather," he says.

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How 'Earth's twin' Venus lost its water and became a hellish planet

"Venus has 100,000 times less water than the Earth, even though it's basically the same size and mass."

Scientists may have identified a molecule that played a key role in robbing Venus of its water and turned this planet into the arid, hellish world we see today.

Venus is often called "Earth's twin" because both planets are around the same size and density; they are also both rocky planets located in the inner region of the solar system. Yet, in many crucial ways, Venus couldn't be less like Earth . 

While our planet is teeming with life, Venus, the second planet from the sun, is a virtual hell. It's the hottest planet in the solar system (even hotter than Mercury , which is closest to the sun), and has temperatures of around 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsius). That's hot enough to melt lead. Plus, Venus has quite fearsome surface pressures. Importantly, Venus also lacks a key element for life that's abundant here on Earth: Water . This is despite the planet being within the so-called " Goldilocks Zone " of the sun, in reference to the region around our star that is neither too hot nor too cold to allow liquid water to exist — and it's also despite the fact scientists know Venus probably used to have water.

Related: Zoozve — the strange 'moon' of Venus that earned its name by accident

In fact, billions of years ago, Venus is believed to have had as much water as Earth — but, at some point in its evolution, clouds of carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere triggered the solar system's most intense runaway greenhouse effect . This sent temperatures soaring to the point they are seen today. That triggered the planet's water to evaporate, after which it was lost to space.

Even factoring this process in, however, scientists don't know how Venus became quite so desert-like or how it is still losing the little water it has left to space. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder may have discovered the secrets of this process by telling what they call "the water story on Venus."

"Water is really important for life," Eryn Cangi, co-team leader and a scientist with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP, said in a statement. "We need to understand the conditions that support liquid water in the universe and that may have produced the very dry state of Venus today.

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"We're trying to figure out what little changes occurred on each planet to drive them into these vastly different states."

Hey, neighbor! Spare a cup of water?

To put into context the difference in water content of planetary neighbors Earth and Venus, Cangi explained that if all the water on our planet were spread evenly across its surface, it would create a global layer almost 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) deep. Doing the same for Venus, stripping the remaining water from the atmosphere would create a global layer just 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) deep.

"Venus has 100,000 times less water than the Earth, even though it's basically the same size and mass," Michael Chaffin, co-team leader and a fellow LASP scientist, explained in the statement.

To determine how it reached its current state, Cangi, Chaffin and colleagues used computer models of the planet, treating it almost like a gigantic chemistry laboratory. This allowed them to take an enhanced look at the diverse reactions that occur in Venus' swirling atmosphere and identify a suspect for its water loss.

What the team discovered was that a molecule called HCO+ — composed of an atom of hydrogen, an atom of carbon and an atom of oxygen — high in the atmosphere of Venus, may have been responsible for delivering the last of the planet's water to space.

"As an analogy, say I dumped out the water in my water bottle," Cangi said. "There would still be a few droplets left."

HCO+ could be removing these droplets from Venus' atmosphere, in essence. In fact, the same team has previously suggested that HCO+ was also the culprit that caused Mars, Earth's other neighbor, to lose its water. 

The researchers say HCO+ is produced constantly in the Venusian atmosphere, but that these ions don't survive for long. An ion is a positively or negatively charged molecule, having earned its charge due to either lacking some electrons necessary to balance the positive charge of its protons, or having extra electrons to create a net negative charge in the molecule.

HCO+ lacks the electrons needed to balance the positive charge of the molecule's protons, and is thus positively charged (hence the + symbol).

Electrons in Venus' atmosphere rapidly recombine with HCO+, causing the molecule to split into two. From there, the team argues that the hydrogen atoms zip away and possibly even escape into space. Hydrogen atoms form two of the components of the water molecule ( H2O ), which is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, so this therefore robs Venus of the primary ingredients of water.

The team thinks that, for Venus to have reached its extreme dry state, the planet must have had an excess of HCO+ molecules in its atmosphere. 

"One of the surprising conclusions of this work is that HCO+ should actually be among the most abundant ions in the Venus atmosphere," Chaffin said.

However, there is a big stumbling block to this conclusion. Thus far, we've never seen HCO+ in Venus' atmosphere.

Chaffin and Cangi don't think that's because the molecule isn't there, however, but rather because humanity has lacked the instruments needed to see it. Though Earth's neighbor Mars has been visited by many spacecraft from Earth, few missions have popped in on our other neighbor Venus — and none of those had the right equipment to see HCO+.

— Life on Venus? Intriguing molecule phosphine spotted in planet's clouds again

— If Venus had Earth-like plate tectonics in its distant past, did it have life too?

— The Magellanic Clouds must be renamed, astronomers say

But a number of future space missions are setting their sights on Venus . NASA's Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) mission is a particularly important one. Set to launch in 2029, DAVINCI will drop a probe through the scorching hot atmosphere of Venus to determine the world's chemical composition. 

Yet, even DAVINCI won't have the right equipment to detect HCO+. 

Still, the team hopes a general interest in Venus will arise thanks to DAVINCI (and the European Space Agency's upcoming mission EnVision ), ultimately leading to a space mission that is indeed capable of detecting HCO+, thus adding veracity to the team's water-loss story.

"There haven't been many missions to Venus," Cangi concluded. "But newly planned missions will leverage decades of collective experience and a flourishing interest in Venus to explore the extremes of planetary atmospheres, evolution and habitability." The team's research was published on Monday (May 6) in the journal Nature . 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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Top 5 Can't-Miss Aviation Museums Across The USA

• You can discover the fascinating evolution of aviation history through several museums around the country.
• Explore the themes of history and innovation such as at the Intrepid Museum in New York City.
• Or step aboard the USS Midway Museum in San Diego to witness the iconic aircraft carrier's rich history firsthand.

A visit to one of the numerous aviation museums across the country could be short for some. However, anyone who considers themselves an aviation enthusiast has likely spent hours during their visit, learning about the US’s rich history . From the beginning of aviation in 1903 with the Wright Flyer, the evolution of space and military aircraft, or boarding an aircraft carrier and getting up close and personal with one of the most celebrated commercial jets, there is plenty to see. Throughout more than a century of aviation, it is evident that there are multitudes of stories that can be told at aviation museums.

As the industry has significantly changed due to technological advancements and innovations, it may be hard to believe that flights and aircraft looked and operated differently compared to today. While some may assume that they would have to travel far to visit these museums – depending on where they reside – a surprising fact is that there is at least one institution dedicated to flying in all 50 states and Washington DC, according to Travel + Leisure . Whether it be a major air and space museum, an aviation hall of fame, or simply an exhibit, the concept of flight has an extraordinary place in the heart of the country.

It may also be challenging to narrow down which museum to visit. However, visiting the following five locations are sure to result in lasting memories.

The National Air and Space Museum

Among one of the most popular museums in the US, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC was established in 1946 and is part of the Smithsonian Institution. Visitors can see hundreds of objects on display, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, space suits worn on the moon, and the Wright Flyer – the first aircraft to perform a sustained flight.

A piece of the moon.

A display of a real rock from the moon is located in the museum’s Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall and is one of the only touchable samples in the world.

If visitors have witnessed everything in the museum and wish to see more, there is another location in a large facility on the outskirts of Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) , according to aviation historian Shea Oakley, who spoke to Travel + Weekly. The expert commented that across both National Air and Space Museum facilities, visitors have access to some of the best pieces of aviation history in the world.

"From the original Wright Flyer, to the Concorde, to the Space Shuttle, these two buildings house perhaps the most famous and significant air and spacecraft collection on the planet."

The museum is open daily from 10:00 to 17:30.

Intrepid Museum

Not far up the Eastern Seaboard is the Intrepid Museum in New York City. The military and maritime ship museum was founded in 1982 as a preservation of the ship. USS Intrepid was a World War II-era aircraft carrier that served from 1943 to 1974.

The museum focuses on where history meets innovation, featuring dynamic exhibitions and technological marvels. Some of the must-see elements include the Enterprise, the world’s first space shuttle, and Growler, a cruise missile submarine. Currently, it is the only nuclear-weapons-carrying submarine that is open to the public. There are also dozens of military aircraft, from fighter jets to supersonic spy planes.

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One of the 18 remaining concordes..

The notable commercial aircraft holds the title of the world’s fastest passenger airliner. Visitors can board the aircraft and view the cabin and cockpit, providing a one-of-a-kind experience.

The Intrepid Museum is open to the public from 10:00 to 17:00 on weekdays and 10:00 to 18:00 on weekends and holidays.

USS Midway Museum

Across the country is another popular aircraft carrier museum. The USS Midway was the longest-serving aircraft carrier in the 20th century and was named after the Battle of Midway, which occurred in June 1942. It took about a year and a half to build the ship, and it was commissioned on September 10, 1945, missing World War II by one week. At the time of commission, it was the largest ship in the world and the first three-ship class carrier to feature an armored flight deck and powerful air group of 120 planes.

USS Midway went on to play critical roles in the Cold War and served with the Atlantic Fleet for a decade. It spent its later years on deployment near North Vietnam, Japan, and the Persian Gulf.

USS Midway was decommissioned in San Diego in 1992.

The ship opened as the USS Midway Museum in June 2004. Since then, it has hosted millions of visitors. In 2010, the museum surpassed five million visitors since its opening. In 2012, it became the first Navy ship museum to host one million visitors annually. The museum is open daily. Visitors can purchase tickets from its website.

Delta Flight Museum

Any passenger on an extended layover at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) can visit the Delta Flight Museum. Opening in 1995, the museum has welcomed visitors from all over the globe to explore aviation history and celebrate the history of Delta Air Lines .

The 68,000-square-foot facility in the heart of the carrier’s headquarters has engaging exhibits and interactive programming for people of all ages:

• Two aircraft hangars and a plaza
• DC-7B plane
• Static DC-9 exhibit
• Static Boeing 757-200 exhibit

A Boeing 747-400 is open to visitors.

The exhibit features a transparent floor, allowing visitors to see the jumbo jet's true size.

The museum is open Sunday through Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday from 10:00 to 16:00. The 747 visitation hours are from 11:00 to 15:00 daily, except on Wednesdays.

The Museum of Flight

Known as the world's largest independent, non-profit air and space museum, The Museum of Flight, near Seattle, Washington, houses over 175 aircraft and spacecraft, tens of thousands of artifacts, millions of rare photographs, and exhibits and experiences that visitors can enjoy. It is also the home of another Concorde airframe.

Air Force One onsite.

This particular Boeing 707 (SAM 970) was the first presidential plane specially built. It was used by the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, but President Eisenhower was the first US President to fly the aircraft in 1959. The aircraft is on loan from the National Museum of the United States Air Force .

The Museum of Flight is open daily from 10:00 to 17:00.

Which museum is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

Top 5 Must-See Aircraft At The National Museum Of The US Air Force

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Chinese state-backed company to launch space tourism flights by 2028

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese commercial space company CAS Space announced its "space tourism vehicle" will first fly in 2027 and travel to the edge of space in 2028, state media reported on Friday.

The announcement comes just days after Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin announced that its New Shepard Rocket, which flies cargo and humans on short trips to the edge of space, would resume flights on Sunday, ending a near two-year pause of crewed operations.

CAS Space said that its vehicle will include a tourist cabin that has four panoramic windows and can carry seven passengers per flight. The company plans to arrange a launch every 100 hours from a newly-built aerospace theme park, with ten vehicles available to take tourists to the edge of space in shifts.

Tickets will cost 2 million to 3 million yuan ($415,127) per person per trip, state media said.

Guangzhou-based CAS Space was founded in 2018 and its second-largest shareholder is China's biggest state research institute, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China's space exploration program has recently narrowed the gap with the United States and could become the first country to return samples from the far side of the moon after it launched the Chang'e-6 mission earlier this month.

That launch attracted hordes of tourists to the launch site on China's island province of Hainan. Before blast-off tens of thousands of people gathered in different viewing spots near the launch site, causing long traffic jams.

($1 = 7.2267 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Sonali Paul)

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