March 2021
Messier 82’s starburst magnetic highway
... whether the field lines emanating from the Sun are open like those in the solar wind, guiding particles from the solar surface to interplanetary space, or are they closed like coronal loops, forming the complex magnetic...
January 2021
Evolution of volatiles on the Moon
...The lunar magnetosphere protecting its tenuous atmosphere from the solar wind and allowing Earth’s early atmosphere a pathway to ...the lunar soil - protected against the ravages of the solar wind. Observations of the nitrogen embedded in lunar soils, ...
01 November 2017
Voyager 1 spies unexpected light at the outer edges of the Solar System
... the second boundary - the heliopause – in 2012. The heliopause is the boundary of the heliosphere that separates the solar wind plasma (a soup of ionised gas made up of of positive ions and free electrons) from the interstellar plasma. Voyager...
February 2023
The scientific basis for lunar helium-3 production
... regolith. In order to extract the helion adsorbed in the regolith, the regolith must first be isolated from the solar wind stream by placing it in a special sealed vacuum vessel, and then subjected to one of the known processing effects. There...
11 December 2018
Voyager 2 joins its twin in interstellar space
... medium lying beyond. As of 5 November, scientists noted a steep decline in the speed of the solar wind particles, followed by a lack of further data on the solar wind flow around Voyager 2 since that date. Coupled with measurements from the probes...
January 2019
Saving humanity – is space up to the job?
... Mars With no iron core the red planet has no natural magnetosphere to allow an atmosphere to remain in place so the solar wind strips off the atmosphere on a continuous basis. But if we were to create a shield for Mars to protect it from the...
