Astro Blog

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/science/triple-sun-planet.html Source: By Jonathan O’Callaghan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: It’s called a circumtriple planet, and evidence that one exists suggests that planet formation is less unusual than once believed. ...GW Ori is a star system 1,300 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion. It is surrounded by a huge disk of dust and gas, a common feature of young star systems that are forming planets. But fascinatingly, it is a system with not one star, but three. ...GW Ori’s disk is split in two, almost like Saturn’s rings if they had a massive gap in between. ...Scientists  have been trying to explain  what is going on there. Some hypothesized that the gap in the disk could be the result of  one or more planets  forming in the system. ...Now the GW Ori system has been  modeled  in greater detail, and researchers say a planet — a gassy world as massive as Jupiter — is the best explanation for the gap in the dust cloud. Although

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-fleet-moon-landers-will-set-sail-next-year-backed-private-companies Source: By Joel Goldberg, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Who knew outsourcing could extend to outer space? In some ways, that’s the aim of NASA’s $2.6 billion initiative meant to galvanize the private sector’s development of Moon landers and rovers. The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program has tasked a number of companies—including Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic—with delivering landers to the Moon’s surface twice a year. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, roughly the size of a tree house, is set to blast off this year from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as is Houston-based Intuitive Machines’s Nova-C. A second Astrobotic lander, Griffin, is expected to launch in 2023, ferrying the well-equipped, NASA-designed Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. Its neutron counter, spectrometers, and specialized drill will seek out evidence of water and attempt to identify its origin. ...an