Space & Physics: The battle for the night sky is underway

Plus, NASA abandons Swift telescope rescue mission                    

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August 20—Hey folks, I'm filling in for Lee today. This week, a look ahead at what will happen if SpaceX and other companies get their way and put two million satellites into orbit around Earth. Plus, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is primed to launch and begin its mission to study the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy—this observatory has a wild origin story. And in other telescope news, sadly, NASA has called off its mission to rescue the Swift telescope from its sinking orbit. All that and much more below! Thoughts? Questions? Let us know via e-mail (newsletters@sciam.com). —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

Top Stories

The battle for the night sky SpaceX and other companies want to put millions of satellites into space. Could orbit run out of room? Jonathan O'Callaghan

How NASA turned a spy satellite into its new dark energy telescope NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon launch to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter Jonathan O'Callaghan

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Orbital data centers could transform our night sky forever Without drastic interventions, data centers in space could disrupt scientific observations and fragile ecosystems by adding almost innumerable new “stars” to the heavens above Arielle Frommer

Life’s ‘last universal common ancestor’ may predate life itself A groundbreaking study hints at a hazy boundary between “life” and “non-life,” as well as two distinct origins of biology on Earth Philip Ball

Physicists are closing in on the origin of matter Researchers have nailed down an elusive quantity called baryon number, which may be responsible for the cosmic mismatch between matter and antimatter Joseph Howlett

China is going back to the moon in search of water ice The country’s latest mission, Chang’e 7, will be the first ever to land directly at the moon’s south pole. Whatever it finds there could radically reshape a new space race Jonathan O'Callaghan

NASA’s rescue mission for the Swift space telescope has failed The space agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which studied cataclysmic cosmic explosions, is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere later this year Adam Kovac

What happens when Betelgeuse blows its top? Betelgeuse, the sky’s most famous red supergiant, is well studied but poorly understood Phil Plait

Some microbes could survive on the moon—that’s a big problem for NASA Five common microorganisms found on Earth could survive at the lunar south pole, a new study finds, presenting a contamination risk for future human missions Adam Kovac

The Milky Way’s fastest star could expose our black hole’s spin The star S301 swoops so close to our galaxy’s supermassive black hole that it could, for the first time ever, reveal that dark behemoth’s rotation Sanidhya Sharma

NASA images reveal 60-foot-wide crater on moon left by SpaceX rocket The SpaceX rocket fragment hit the moon at several times the speed of sound on August 5 Claire Cameron

Robotic rescue missions are sparking a spaceflight revolution Two new missions are revealing how robotic repair and assembly could become routine on the final frontier Tom Metcalfe

388 years ago Galileo worked out why human giants can’t exist—and explained a law of physics Giants have featured in stories for millennia, but the reason why they don’t exist helps explain the natural world Joel David Hamkins, The MIT Press Reader

What We're Reading

A detailed look at NASA's plans to keep the Voyager spacecrafts alive. | The New York Times Scientists discover whale calls adhere to Einstein's theory of special relativity. | Gizmodo Most places on Earth have lost their dark skies and it's contributing to declining mental health. | Space Daily

From the Archive

Inside NASA’s audacious plan to save a doomed space telescope NASA’s Swift space telescope is doomed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere later this year. A daring mission to boost it to safety could have big implications for science Meghan Bartels

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