The high price tag of getting stuff off the Earth makes it almost impossible for lots
of countries to do science in space.
But many of them are about to get their first shot!
At the International Astronautical Congress last week, the United Nations Office for Outer
Space Affairs announced that they’ll be launching their first ever space mission in
2021.
They hope to send over a dozen experiments from different countries into low-Earth orbit
for 14 days.
Any country that’s part of the United Nations will be able to participate, but countries
without their own space program will be given priority.
They will have to pay a fee to be a part of the mission.
And the official price hasn’t been announced yet, but the UN plans to work with sponsors
to cover the majority of mission costs.
Over the next year, the official mission goals will be decided.
But for now, countries can submit experiment proposals for any topic, from materials science
to climate change.
The final payloads will be chosen in 2018, leaving three years for the countries to develop
their experiments.
And while they’re working, the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs will offer technical
support and advice, since many of these countries won’t have had much experience designing
experiments for microgravity.
Once they are ready, the experiments will hitch a ride to space aboard Dream Chaser,
a reusable spacecraft currently under development by the Sierra Nevada Corporation.
Like the old NASA space shuttles, Dream Chaser launches with help from a rocket booster,
and lands like an airplane.
Because it’s only about the size of a regional jet, it can land at any spaceport or commercial
airport that’s big enough – including airports in UN member states without a fancy
space center.
Earlier this year, the UN announced another opportunity for countries looking to experiment
in space.
They made an agreement with China that will allow UN member states to send experimental
payloads and even astronauts to the proposed Chinese space station, which will hopefully
be operational by 2022.
The UN hopes that opportunities like the Dream Chaser mission and the space station agreement
will open doors for many developing countries, and inspire students to consider careers in
science and engineering.
So, big things are happening on Earth.
But meanwhile, in space, there’s some Earth-shaking news, too.
Or should I say, planet-shaking.
We’ve talked about moonquakes and marsquakes before, but now scientists have found evidence
of earthquake activity on Mercury, too.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Mercury might still
experience “mercuryquakes,” even though we thought its tectonic activity stopped a
long time ago.
Around 4.5 billion years ago, during Mercury’s early days, the planet experienced a ton of
tectonic activity as it cooled and shrank.
While it was shrinking, parts of its crust were under so much pressure that they broke
apart, were pushed together, and, eventually, the pieces slipped against each other.
One piece of the crust was pushed upwards, and a cliff – called a fault scarp – was
created.
Billions of years ago, a lot of fault scarps were formed because the planet shrank anywhere
between 3 and 14 kilometers in diameter.
But that was a long time ago, and we thought that Mercury was no longer active.
But, apparently, it is!
According to a new analysis of photos from the MESSENGER spacecraft, which orbited Mercury
from 2011 to 2015, the planet has small fault scarps less than 50 million years old.
Although that sounds ancient, these cliffs form really slowly.
And if new fault scarps are still forming, even today, that means Mercury is still shrinking
and cooling down!
As the rocky surface shifts, there are mercuryquakes, which are estimated to be around a magnitude
5 on the Richter scale – although scientists haven’t sent seismometers to Mercury to
measure them yet.
In other words, these quakes wouldn’t topple any sturdy houses, but furniture might shift,
or a photo or two might fall off the wall.
Even though we learned that small quakes can happen on the Moon during the Apollo missions,
this is the first time we’ve seen current evidence of tectonic activity on a planet
besides Earth.
On top of having mercuryquakes, the planet is also warm enough to have a partially molten
core, which is still creating a weak magnetic field.
Since Mercury is so small and old, it’s also a mystery why it hasn’t finished cooling
already – so, there’s a lot left to discover about the thermal evolution of planets.
But, hey, with new countries getting their first shot at space science, we’ll hopefully
have a lot more people thinking about the answers.
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