TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
September 8, 2025
IRAS 04302: Butterfly Disk Planet Formation
This butterfly can hatch planets. The nebula fanning out from the star IRAS 04302+2247 may look like the wings of a butterfly, while the vertical brown stripe down the center may look like the butterfly's body but together they indicate an active planet-forming system. The featured picture was captured recently in infrared light by the Webb Space Telescope. Pictured, the vertical disk is thick with the gas and dust from which planets form. The disk shades visible and (most) infrared light from the central star, allowing a good view of the surrounding dust that reflects out light. In the next few million years, the dust disk will likely fragment into rings through the gravity of newly hatched planets. And a billion years from now, the remaining gas and dust will likely dissipate, leaving mainly the planets like in our Solar System.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
NASA and NOAA target solar threats with new space weather observatories
Sept. 7, 2025
Soon, there will be three new ways to study the Sun’s influence across the solar system with the launch of a trio of NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) spacecraft.
Expected to launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23, the missions include NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1) spacecraft, Mara Johnson-Groh writes for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Continue reading original article.
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
8 September 2025 - NASA and NOAA are preparing to launch three spacecraft - IMAP, the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and SWFO-L1 - to study the Sun and improve protections against space weather.
All three will travel to the Earth-Sun Lagrange point (L1), about a million miles from Earth, where they can continuously observe solar activity.
NASA’s IMAP mission will map the heliosphere and measure solar wind and energetic particles in near real time. Its data will enhance models that predict hazardous space weather events, which can disrupt satellites, communications, and power systems.
NOAA’s SWFO-L1 will operate as a dedicated space weather observatory. Positioned at L1, it will provide early warnings of solar storms by detecting coronal mass ejections and monitoring the solar wind upstream from Earth.
This near-real-time data will allow NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center to give operators more lead time to safeguard satellites, communications networks, power grids, and other infrastructure from solar-driven disruptions.
The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will study Earth’s exosphere, the outermost atmospheric layer that plays a critical role in how the planet absorbs and releases energy during solar storms.
Its observations will clarify how the exosphere influences disturbances that can affect satellites, signals, and ground-based technologies.
https://www.militaryaerospace.com/home/news/55314629/nasa-and-noaa-target-solar-threats-with-new-space-weather-observatories
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/tech-from-nasas-hurricane-hunting-tropics-flies-on-commercial-satellites/
NASA Launches 2026 Lunabotics Challenge
Sep 08, 2025
As college students across the country embark upon the academic year, NASA is giving them something else to look forward to – the agency’s 2026 Lunabotics Challenge.
Teams interested in participating can submit their applications and supporting materials through NASA’s Stem Gateway portal beginning Monday, Sept. 8.
Key dates and challenge details are available in the 2026 Lunabotics Challenge Guidebook. Once all applications and supporting materials are received and evaluated, NASA will notify the selected teams to begin the challenge.
Student teams participating in this year’s challenge will create robots capable of building berms out of lunar regolith – the loose, fragmental material on the Moon’s surface.
Structures like these will be important during lunar missions as blast protection during lunar landings and launches, shading for cryogenic propellant tank farms, radiation shielding around nuclear power plants, and other uses critical to future Moon missions.
“We are excited to continue the Lunabotics competition for universities as NASA develops new Moon to Mars technologies for the Artemis program,” said Robert Mueller, senior technologist at NASA, as well as co-founder and chief judge of the Lunabotics competition. “Excavating and moving regolith is a fundamental need to build infrastructure on the Moon and Mars and this competition creates 21st century skills in the future workforce.”
An in-person qualifying event will be held May 12-17, 2026, at the University of Central Florida’s Space Institute’s Exolith Lab in Orlando.
From this round, the top 10 teams will be invited to bring their robots to the final competition on May 19-21, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Artemis Arena in Florida, which has an area filled with a lunar regolith simulant.
The team scoring the most points will receive the Lunabotics Grand Prize and participate in an exhibition-style event at NASA Kennedy.
By encouraging innovative construction techniques and assessing student designs and data the same way it does its own prototypes, NASA casts a wider net to find innovative solutions to challenges inherent in future Artemis missions, like developing future lunar excavators, in-situ resource utilization capabilities, and living on the Moon or Mars.
With its multidisciplinary approach, Lunabotics also serves as a workforce pipeline, with teams gaining valuable hands-on experience in computer coding, engineering, manufacturing, fabricating, and other crucial skills, while also receiving technical expertise in space technology development.
NASA’s Lunabotics Challenge, held annually since 2010, is one of several Artemis Student Challenges.
The two-semester competition provides U.S. college and technical school teams an opportunity to design, build, and operate a prototype lunar robot using NASA systems engineering processes.
Competitions help NASA get innovative design and operational data, reduce risks, and cultivate new ideas needed to return to the Moon under the Artemis campaign to prepare for human exploration of Mars.
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-colleges-universities/nasa-launches-2026-lunabotics-challenge/
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/lunabotics-challenge/
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Space-Flown Sacagawea Dollars Drawing Bids in Stack’s Bowers Auction
September 8, 2025
Online bidding has opened in Stack’s Bowers Galleries’ Sept. 12 auction for one of the most unique offerings ever presented on behalf of the United States Mint: eight Sacagawea gold dollars that bridge numismatics with space history.
Announced last month, the auction already has bids ranging from $48,000 to $100,000, but final prices are expected to climb significantly higher, with Stack’s Bowers citing a 1999 value estimate of "approximately $1 million" for each space-flown coin.
Final live bidding begins at 9:00 a.m. PDT (12:00 p.m. EDT) on Sept. 12 at the firm’s Costa Mesa, California headquarters and online.
First Public Offering of Space-Flown Sacagaweas
Originally, 39 Sacagawea dollars were struck in 22-karat gold, but only the 12 finest were selected to fly aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in July 1999; the rest were destroyed. Commanded by Col. Eileen Collins, the mission marked the first shuttle flight led by a woman.
During their 1.8 million-mile journey — about 80 orbits of Earth — these proofs served to raise awareness of the Sacagawea dollar, which entered circulation the following year.
Each coin carries the finely detailed "engraved tail-feathers" reverse, the same design found on the scarce "Cheerios" dollars, which was used only on the earliest Sacagawea coins before being replaced with a lighter design.
"Furthermore, they are the only federally-issued U.S. coins to be struck exclusively for spaceflight," Stack’s Bowers notes.
"While other coins have traveled into space — including the famous ‘space penny’ 1793 Wreath Cent Stack’s Bowers Galleries sold for $82,250 in May 2015 — no others were produced specifically with orbit in mind."
After their return from space, the coins were secured at Fort Knox and displayed publicly just once, at the 2007 ANA World’s Fair of Money in Milwaukee.
With seven now crossing the block, five will remain in the Mint’s collection, with two reserved for museums and special-event displays.
"The remaining five coins will be kept as part of the US Mint’s archived permanent heritage collection," the Mint stated.
"The United States Mint will set aside two coins to entertain requests to display at special events, museums, and other institutions."
All seven have been certified by Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) as Proof-69 Deep Cameo, with current bids ranging from $65,000 to $100,000.
The First 2025-W Sacagawea Joins the Lineup
Alongside the space-flown group is the first-struck 2025-W Sacagawea dollar in 24-karat gold.
Issued for the series’ 25th anniversary, it is part of the 7,500 half-ounce proof coins released by the U.S. Mint on July 31 and sold out quickly at $2,175 each, though this inaugural piece was held back as the #1 example.
Certified by PCGS as Proof-70 Deep Cameo, it currently carries a bid of $48,000.
https://www.coinnews.net/2025/09/08/space-flown-sacagawea-dollars-drawing-bids-in-stacks-bowers-auction/
https://auctions.stacksbowers.com/auctions/3-1LTXOX/september-2025-legendary-space-flown-2000-w-22k-gold-1-struck-2025-w-24k-gold-sacagawea-dollars-on-behalf-of-the-united-states-mint-lots-1001-1008
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/09/exclusive-space-development-agency-director-derek-tournear-steps-down/
https://www.sda.mil/
EXCLUSIVE: Space Development Agency Director Derek Tournear steps down
September 08, 2025 8:30 am
Derek Tournear, who has headed the Space Development Agency (SDA) almost since its inception, is leaving the agency for academia — telling Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview he’s making the move “at a really good point in the agency.”
“I’ve been with SDA now for over six years. When I first started in this role, I told my wife it would be for two, three years tops. So six years seems to be a good time to call it,” he said. “The agency has matured from from a startup to now a full operational agency.”
Tournear joined SDA as the first permanent director in October 2019, replacing Fred Kennedy who had stood up the agency as part of the Defense Department’s Office of Research and Engineering. Kennedy quit in June 2019 after only four months in the job.
During the wide-ranging interview, Tournear spoke at length about his successor, his tenure at SDA, and what he sees as the agency’s contributions to the Pentagon’s space mission — as well as revealing at least one thing he’d do over if he could.
He will be replaced at least in the near-term by Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, the current SDA deputy, who will become acting director.
“He is extremely well suited. We brought him in December, because he has a very lengthy background in active duty, both in the Marines and the Navy, so that he really understands how the capabilities that SDA will provide will be used by the war fighter in battle,” Tournear said.
Sandhoo further has “a long history of being able to field new capabilities in space, as he had had a dozen years at Naval Research Laboratory and ended up running their their space center,” he added.
Sandhoo first joined SDA as a senior advisor, and was named deputy director in July after the departure of Ryan Frigm.
As for Tournear’s future, he said he will be taking up a position at Auburn University in Alabama, although working from their local office here. Auburn, he noted, is looking to up its game in space technology development and research.
“The want to get more involved in in space innovation and being able to build an ecosystem around space as an education facility and a research house. And so I’m going to be leading that for them,” he said. “
When that kind of fell into my lap, it was difficult to say no to, because that’s too exciting.”
Tournear’s Highlights: Link 16, Tracking Missiles, Laser Comms
Looking back at his time helming SDA, Tournear touted SDA’s demonstration proving that Link 16 could be used by satellites to transmit targeting data to weapons platforms in the air, on land and at sea as the agency’s biggest technological success.
“That is a huge accomplishment, because what that has done is it has proven that we can [connect with] legacy, fielded systems with no change to the user equipment — so, these are the systems that the US and all of our allies use to fight,” he explained.
“Space will now enable us to make Link 16, which was a regional communication network, global, which is a huge deal because it allows all of the combatant commanders to utilize this communication network that they already know how to use, they already trained with, they already practiced with our allies,” he added.
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Tournear said the second major SDA tech accomplishment was proving that satellites based in low Earth orbit (LEO) could successfully detect and track missiles — a mission traditionally assigned to large satellites in higher orbits.
He noted that as SDA was gearing up its Tracking Layer constellation, there were a number of skeptics within the Defense Department’s research and engineering community about whether this would work given the physics involved.
“At a lower orbit when [your satellite is] screaming across the Earth, the missiles are screaming across the Earth, and the background is moving right relative to your satellite pretty drastically. They said it’s going to be impossible,” Tournear said.
But SDA was able to prove that it is possible, he said, based in large part on modeling and simulation work done previously by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) under its Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) program.
Finally, Tournear said SDA’s progress in developing laser communications systems that serve as the foundational “enablers” of SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture’s mesh network design.
While a number of companies have demonstrated optical intersatellite links, he said SDA was able to successfully achieve laser communications “with very affordable, low size, weight and power optical terminals” and “from different spacecraft manufacturers.“
Most recently on the laser comms front, the agency announced on Sept. 2 its first successful demonstration of laser communications between a satellite and an aircraft in flight.
“The successful proof-of-concept demonstration took place in July between a General Atomics Electromagnetics optical communications terminal that was mounted to an aircraft and a commercial satellite operated by Kepler Communications in an orbit around 311 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth,” the announcement said.
This “was something we tried to demonstrate for the last three years, we were finally successful at it, and that was using these same affordable, commoditized SDA compliant … optical comms terminals,” Tournear said.
“That’s a big deal too, because I think that is, that is what opens up a lot of missions in the future.”
Regrets, I’ve had a few …
Asked what his biggest regret was about his tenure, Tournear joked: “Oh … we don’t have time to get into all my regrets.”
Nevertheless, he said that looking back, he wished that he and the agency had more rapidly accepted the shift of SDA from DoD Research and Engineering to, in essence, the Space Force — as a free-standing acquisition shop under the Air Force assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration, and with a direct line to Space Force chief Gen. Chance Saltzman.
“One of the things that I was extremely apprehensive about was the fold of SDA into the Space Force. We actually fought that for quite some time,” he said.
“[I]f I had to do it over again, I actually would not have fought that, and I would have embraced it more. Because the Space Force is not the Air Force, and the Space Force culture was much more accepting of the SDA mindset.”
Tournear was optimistic about SDA’s future, despite a recent review calling into question the agency’s independent processes, and the current uncertainty about its plans for a third iteration, called Tranche 3, of Transport Layer data relay satellites.
As first reported by Breaking Defense, the Department of the Air Force (DAF) in late January ordered an independent review of whether SDA’s “organizational performance and acquisition approach” is meeting the needs of warfighters, including its independence from the Space Force’s primary acquisition organization, Space Systems Command.
The review came in the wake of a Jan. 16 DAF decision to place Tournear on administrative leave for undisclosed reasons, which Breaking Defense first learned was related to a contracting dispute.
He was reinstated in April following an investigation about which DAF declined to provide details.
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Tournear said that the review has been completed and by and large “validated” SDA’s acquisition model and processes. “The main point of that review was to come out and say, ‘Look, SDA is doing this stuff the correct way,'” he said.
The review put forward eight recommendations, Tournear added, “almost all” of which were “already being incorporated” as “good ideas” for improving the agency’s processes.
Among those, he stressed, were recommendations that SDA be “better supported” with additional personnel and “more consistent” funding.
Only one recommendation — a call for the establishment of a top-level Board of Directors — was rejected by the agency.
Tranche 3 And The Mysterious MILNET
As for Transport Layer Tranche 3, Tournear suggested that in his view it would go forward, alongside the Space Force’s mysterious MILNET communications network that only recently emerged from the shadows.
DoD and DAF have been considering possibly replacing Tranche 3 with MILNET, which is based on SpaceX’s Starshield terminals and being acquired via the National Reconnaissance Office.
Such a move would in effect kill the Transport Layer, which is one of SDA’s raisons d’etre. Tournear suggested it would be better to get both flying.
“MILNET and the Transport Layer serve two different functions. All of that is part of data transport, and it’s all needed. And so in the future, as that plays out, there are some synergies between the two,” Tournear said.
He explained that the Space Force “is committed to building out a transport layer that does tactical communication, which is what the SDA Transport Layer has been focused on, and that is Link 16 tactical communication directly to special platforms that rely on low bandwidth but extremely low latency communications.”
And that is something that Starlink/Starshield satellites cannot do, Tournear said, stressing that “Link 16 from space is only the SDA Transport Layer.” (SpaceX did not respond to a query about the issue.)
On the other hand, Tournear said that MILNET will bring something to the table that is needed: the ability to “move large amounts of data across the backbone and move large amounts of data in and out of theater.”
Further, he stressed, SDA has been focused on the “Android model” of “open architecture, architecture, open standards, and has competition for anyone to build the hardware and plug in.”
As for MILNET, Tournear said the key question is whether it is instead more similar to the “iPhone model,” under which one vendor “controls everything and has a network, and that is easier to build, obviously, and easier to integrate, because it’s all controlled by one, but then you lose a lot of the free market dynamics.”
(MILNET, at least at the moment, is being pursued under a sole-source contract with SpaceX; and SpaceX uses its own proprietary standard for Starlink/Starshield intersatellite laser links rather than SDA’s open standard.)
“Is that the way in the future? I don’t believe that,” Tournear said.
As for advice to his successor, Tournear said the key is to “continue to stay focused on the warfighter.
“The battleground is not in space. The battleground is on Earth, and space just needs to make sure that the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are on the ground get the capabilities they need to be able to conduct the fight in an efficient manner,” he said.
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Blood moon wows skywatchers worldwide: Best photos of the September 2025 total lunar eclipse
September 8, 2025
A total lunar eclipse delighted stargazers overnight on Sept. 7-8 with a spectacular display of orbital mechanics that briefly turned Earth's natural satellite blood red.
This week's total lunar eclipse graced the night sky as Earth drifted between the moon and sun, veiling the lunar disk in its umbral silhouette. As the moon slipped into the deepest part of our planet's shadow — a period known as totality — a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering saw the moon adopt a bloody red hue, as sunlight scattered by Earth's atmosphere was bent onto the lunar surface.
Over seven billion people had a direct line of sight as Earth's shadow swept over the lunar disk, according to TimeandDate, allowing photographers across western Australia, Asia, Africa and Europe to capture the distinct phases of the eclipse in exquisite detail.
Read on to see a collection of spectacular images of the Sept. 7-8 blood moon.
Moar blood moon cont.
https://www.space.com/stargazing/lunar-eclipses/blood-moon-best-photos-total-lunar-eclipse-sept-7-2025
Artificial Moon Anomalies: What Nasa Isn’t Telling You
Sep 5, 2025
Billy Carson reveals shocking truths about the Apollo moon landings, debunking conspiracy theories and exposing NASA's manipulation of images.
He discusses the Van Allen radiation belts, lunar anomalies, and government cover-ups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-2spx1EHP8
https://www.youtube.com/@billycarsonofficial
https://www.youtube.com/@4biddenKnowledgePodcast
https://www.space.com/astronomy/dwarf-planets/1st-known-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua-is-an-exo-pluto-a-completely-new-class-of-object-scientists-say
1st known interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua is an 'exo-Pluto' — a completely new class of object, scientists say
September 8, 2025
The first interstellar object to visit the solar system may have been a fragment of an icy exoplanet, research suggests.
When 1I/'Oumuamua was first spotted in 2017, astronomers quickly determined that it came from outside the solar system.
But although it was initially classified as a comet from another star system, it may actually be the skin of an "exo-Pluto," a completely unexpected class of Pluto-like objects anticipated to visit the sun.
"Everything about this object is consistent with it being a slab of nitrogen ice like you see on the surface of Pluto," said Steve Desch, an exoplanet researcher at Arizona State University.
Desch presented his findings in July at the Progress in Understanding the Pluto Mission: 10 Years after Flyby conference in Laurel, Maryland.
Instead of being a mix of water ice, rock and carbon-rich material left over from the formation of the solar system, 'Oumuamua appears to be almost pure nitrogen ice.
And rather than being a compact ball, the visitor is more elongated than any known body in the solar system and starkly different from the interstellar Comets 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS, the only other known interstellar visitors.
"'Oumuamua is in a different category of object," Desch told Space.com by email. "It's much harder to find, but there are a lot more of them."
"We weren't expecting objects like this"
Planets arise from the cloud of gas and dust left over after a star is born. The first few million years are chaotic as the growing worlds jostle for their place around the young star.
In the solar system, the dance of the giant planets cast out a wealth of material. Most of the icy stuff was ejected; scientists think the icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune today make up only a small portion of the original ejecta.
Early on, there may have been enough material to create as many as 2,000 Pluto-like objects, along with 6,000 other, larger dwarf planets, according to Desch.
"Each Pluto would have been pummeled with a Vesta-mass of material," Desch said at the conference, referring to the second-largest object in the asteroid belt. (The largest, Ceres, is also classified as a dwarf planet.)
These collisions would have carved out some of the outermost layer of the wannabe planets. Observations made by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its 2015 flyby suggest that most of Pluto's surface is made of nitrogen ice, with some water ice acting as "bedrock."
Although some of this base layer was likely ejected as well, Desch and his colleague Alan Jackson, also of Arizona State University, used simulations to determine that most of the material scraped from the baby Plutos was nitrogen.
During the shake-up of the solar system, these objects would have been redistributed. Passing by the sun too often would have caused many of them to evaporate quickly.
Some would have been hurled inward, toward the sun. Others would have been tossed outward by Jupiter’s gravity.
A handful of that group may have been captured in the Oort cloud at the very edge of the solar system, but most would have ended up adrift in interstellar space.
If planetary dances are common around other stars — and a growing number of observations suggest that they may be — then fragments of exo-Plutos may be ejected alongside comets and full-size planets.
There are hints that some objects classified as comets may actually be chunks of Pluto. In 2018, a separate research team reported that the unusual chemistry of Comet C/2016 R2 hints that it might be a collisional fragment from a Kuiper Belt object.
Two other comets, C/1908 R1 Morehouse and C/1961 R1 Humason, have similar nitrogen-rich compositions that could classify them as scrapings from a proto-Pluto.
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In a pair of papers published in 2018 and 2021 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, Desch and Jackson more fully explored how the unusual properties of 'Oumuamua would be better explained by a fragment of a Pluto-like object than by a comet.
"Because we had hardly seen such objects in the solar system, we weren't expecting objects like this," Desch told Space.com. "But we should have.
Fragments of icy surfaces from Pluto-like dwarf planets were almost certainly ejected from our solar system, and 'Oumuamua made us come to grips with how much material must have been ejected."
An unlikely comet
When astronomers first spotted 'Oumuamua, it didn't quite meet their expectations of an exocomet. Although its rapid speed was one of the first signs of its extrasolar origin, it was moving much more slowly than anticipated. Solar system comets are made of water ice, silicates and carbon-rich material, while 'Oumuamua was nitrogen-rich. At about 330 feet (100 meters) in diameter before the sun began to melt its ice, 'Oumuamua was also far smaller than most comets, which typically range from about a few kilometers to tens of kilometers in diameter.
Finally, the object had an unusual shape that puzzled astronomers. Eventually, they determined that 'Oumuamua didn't have the roughly spherical core typically seen in comets; instead, it was elongated, or "pancake-shaped," Desch said.
'Oumuamua's low speed could be explained by its ejection from a young star. As stars age, gravitational interactions with their neighbors provide an occasional speed boost.
If a fragment from an icy world was ejected early, the star would be traveling relatively slowly, imparting that reduced speed to its expelled material.
The nitrogen-rich material also suggested a youthful lifetime. Exposure to cosmic rays erodes the nitrogen ice, leaving behind water-ice objects that are likely more plentiful.
Desch and Jackson estimate that 'Oumuamua is less than 2 billion years old, and perhaps as young as 500 million years old. They suspect it came from a young system, perhaps in the Perseus arm, the closest spiral in the Milky Way to the sun's location in the Orion arm.
The short-lived nitrogen is what made 'Oumuamua so easy to detect. While the water-ice leftovers may be more plentiful, nitrogen ice shines more brightly.
But it also evaporates easily; Desch and Jackson estimate that by the time 'Oumuamua was observed, it had lost more than 90% of the mass it had brought into the solar system.
Altogether, it looks as though chunks of exoplanets may be quite plentiful.
"I think these objects are strong support for the idea that fragments of Pluto surfaces are part of the population of things ejected from the solar system," Desch said.
Indeed, the prompt discovery of 'Oumuamua suggests that interstellar objects may be an order of magnitude more abundant than formerly thought.
Desch said he expects astronomers will find many more interstellar visitors using the Pan-STARRS and ATLAS surveys that found 'Oumuamua and ATLAS, as well as the newly operational Vera Rubin Observatory.
By studying objects from beyond the solar system, researchers may be able to understand more about the outermost dwarf planets.
"More observations of 'Oumuamua-like objects … would tell us a lot about the composition of Plutos," Desch said.
He pointed to observations from New Horizons that suggest our own Pluto may have had a thick coat of nitrogen ice that was lost by impacts and other processes over the 4.5 billion-year life of the solar system.
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There was a weird little story that came from David Adair, (I think, but could be wrong) where he said that there were some astronauts getting ready for launch up to the ISS or the moon or somewhere.
They launched and reached their destination. When they got to where they were going, they noticed that some of the people there were people they saw on the ground prior to launching, but those people didn't come with them and nobody knew how they got there.