10 Important Space Explorations Made in the Last Month

We are making many new discoveries about space every day, thanks to the satellites, spacecrafts and giant telescopes and observatories that watch the sky. It is getting harder and harder to follow these developments.

In the last month, plenty of discoveries were made about space, and important developments took place. Let’s take a look at the one-month space agenda, which includes a lot of news from asteroids, Earth-like planets and research that sheds light on our Solar System…

An almost 4.5 billion-year-old pristine primordial asteroid has been studied for the first time: It has been discovered to be composed of materials that make up the planets in our Solar System.

The Japanese Spacecraft Hayabusa2 set off for an important mission in 2014 and reached the asteroid Ryugu in 2018. Samples from the asteroid returned to our planet at the end of 2020 and have been studied ever since.

What makes the samples obtained from Ryugu special is that, for the first time in history, they were taken from a material that has been untouched for billions of years, primitive and has survived in the vacuum of space without being subjected to any intervention. The results are equally impressive.

Research teams working on Ryugu with many different methods reveal that this asteroid was formed only 5 million years after our Solar System began to form. As you know, our Solar System began to form 4.6 billion years ago, which shows that Ryugu is also almost 4.6 billion years old.

Another remarkable detail about Ryugu, apart from its age, is that it consists of the same materials that make up our Solar System and naturally the Earth. Professor Hisayoshi Yurimoto, who is part of the research team, summarizes this situation with the words ‘Ryugu is one of the building blocks of the Earth’.

It is thought that the researches and results obtained on Ryugu will answer many questions about the formation of planets.

NASA assembles a science team to study images of ‘unidentified sky phenomena’ that took over the spotlight with Pentagon verification

The Pentagon has confirmed the existence of images by making statements about various unidentified flying object images over the past year. Although research on its origin has not found evidence that the ‘things’ in the images are extraterrestrial or point to an intelligent alien civilization, it is a matter of great curiosity what these objects are.

While these images, which are reflected on the cameras of the soldiers, are vehicles belonging to aliens, according to some, possibilities such as light refractions or advanced, secret human technology are also emphasized.

But there are many unanswered questions on the subject. To answer these questions, NASA formed a team of scientists. In the studies that will start in the fall, the sources of these objects that do not belong to anything we can identify will be investigated. During the study, the team will benefit from artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.

What makes the decision important is that it breaks the taboos on this subject, which seems to be ‘not a scientific issue’, and creates a different working area and creates a safe space for diversity in space studies. It is really critical, given what we can learn in the future, that such topics, which the scientific community has ridiculed in the past, can be researched by a team of valuable scientists.

An important discovery has been made that will change and expand the search for extraterrestrial life.

As far as we have observed so far, the only habitable planet is Earth. But of course, this does not mean that there are no other habitable planets. We can only look at a tiny fraction of a universe yet with limited means.

In this way, scientists are looking at planets and systems that may be more ‘point-of-point’ by making some narrowing downs. One of his focuses was on studying stars with Sun-like structures. But almost half of the Sun-like sized stars are binary star systems. However, until now, it was thought that binary star systems were not very suitable for planet formation, and therefore not a suitable environment for life.

A new study with shared results suggests that planetary systems form differently around binary stars than around lone stars such as the sun, and that these differences may affect the life-supporting potential of a binary star system.

“The result is exciting because the search for extraterrestrial life will be equipped with several new, extremely powerful tools in the coming years,” said Jes Kristian Jørgensen, lead author of the study, one of the scientists who conducted the research. This adds to the importance of understanding how planets form around different types of stars. “Such results could identify places that would be particularly interesting to investigate the existence of life.”

Shared the most detailed three-dimensional map of our Galaxy ever: From the expansion of the universe to the death of stars, important data was presented

In the last month, very important data came from the Gaia mission, which was launched by the European Space Agency to better understand our galaxy. The most detailed and largest 3D map of the Milky Way Galaxy has ever been shared.

The map and the data presented naturally caused great excitement in the scientific world. It is thought that the presented data will provide important information about the history and formation of our galaxy in research. It is also stated that the data obtained from Gaia will be a great source for topics such as the expansion of the universe, the formation and death of stars, asteroids and their satellites.

Another detailed map came from the Moon: China has produced the most detailed map of the Moon

China has produced a high-resolution and detailed map of the Moon, using both the data it has obtained from its own Moon missions in the last 15 years and the data of countries such as the USA, India and Japan.

The map, which reveals the geological layers, structural features and chronology of the lunar surface, includes all the structures found on the Moon such as craters, basins and rock formations. It is said that the map will be useful in future manned and unmanned missions on the Moon. It is also stated that it will provide information about the formation, development and geological features of the Moon.

A planetary system that hosts Earth-like planets and is ‘only’ 33 light-years away has been discovered

According to the data obtained from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, which NASA continues to search for exoplanets, scientists have discovered a planetary system very close to our galaxy, about 33 light-years away.

The discovery, which was detected in late 2021 and has continued to be confirmed since then, was finally confirmed and announced recently. While it was stated that there are at least two Earth-like planets in the system, it was stated that these planets are not suitable for life. The orbital periods of the stars of these two planets, which are 1.2 and 1.5 times the size of the Earth, are 2.8 and 5.7 days, respectively.

Images of a star ‘destroying’ surrounding planets have been recorded for the first time in history

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of a white dwarf star ‘swallowing’ and destroying planets and celestial bodies in its system.

This star, named G238-44, 86 light-years from Earth, was caught by the Hubble Space Telescope when it was in the phase where it swallowed all the celestial bodies around it before it exploded. According to the statements of the scientists involved in the study, a star that ‘swallows’ by affecting a wide area as they observed in G238-44 is displayed for the first time.

Jupiter found to ‘swallow’ surrounding celestial bodies while in formation

We know very little about Jupiter, the largest and most mysterious planet in the Solar System. We do not know exactly how Jupiter, which is a gas giant and has a surface due to the huge gas clouds around it, and if so, we are not even sure what surface it is. We are only sure that it was one of the first planets of the Solar System to form.

However, we are trying to increase our knowledge on this subject with data from the spacecraft Juno. The latest information shows that Jupiter grew by ‘swallowing’ the celestial bodies and planetary bodies around it as it formed. With this work, the team finally got an idea of ​​what lies behind Jupiter’s gas layer, and mapped the ‘rocky’ region at the center of Jupiter. It is stated that the data collected will help us better understand both Jupiter and planets such as Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

An object that looks like a ‘small galaxy’ has been discovered in the center of the Milky Way

In an observation made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, an object that looks like a ‘small galaxy’ was discovered at the center of our galaxy. It was discovered that this celestial body, which looks like a mini-galactic spiral in the images, is a huge and young star.

Young stars and the ‘gas discs’ that have accompanied them for millions of years, serving as fuel around them, are actually abundant in the universe. But what makes this star and the gas disk around it intriguing is that it is the first time such an observation has been made so close to the center of another galaxy. The formation of the star, its interaction with the surrounding celestial bodies and its effects on our galaxy continue to be investigated.

NASA prepares to send tiny floating robots to ocean-covered planets

Especially planets and moons, which are covered with huge ice sheets and huge oceans underneath, are among the celestial bodies that draw our attention most in the search for life. But it is not so easy to cross the ice sheets or study the oceans.

Ethan Schaler, a robotic mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,’s new project, which has received $600,000 in funding, proposes a very logical way to study the oceans of planets by crossing huge ice floes; tiny floating robots.

These tiny robots, which are still under development, will help us to better understand the structure of planets and the search for life in our Solar System and perhaps even exoplanets in the coming years.