News
Unlocking Lunar Mysteries: The Quest for Water
March 21, 2024
Humanity's return to the Moon underscores the significance of lunar water, pivotal for life, prompting inquiries into its whereabouts, quantity, and origins. These answers hold profound implications for understanding the Earth-Moon system's formation, laying the groundwork for our planet. UCLA's Professor Hao Cao and his team pioneer magnetic field technologies to address these queries. Their research focuses on detecting water within lunar rocks by observing magnetic field disturbances, utilizing magnetometers, a technology UCLA has been supplying to NASA since 1965.
Confirmation of ancient lake on Mars builds excitement for Perseverance rover’s samples
January 26, 2024
Ground-penetrating radar on board NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has confirmed that the Jezero crater, formed by an ancient meteor impact just north of the Martian equator, once harbored a vast lake and river delta.
Hum of the Sun
NOV 14, 2023
What does space sound like? It’s a question that has fascinated composers and scientists alike throughout history. Through a process called data sonification, heliophysicists are using NASA satellites like audio recorders to listen to the electromagnetic symphony our Sun plays on the strings of Earth’s magnetic field, and making new discoveries along the way. Learn how you can join UCLA EPSS heliophysicist Mike Hartinger and sonification specialist Robert Alexander in listening to Earth’s “magnetic harp” in a new NASA citizen science initiative.
UCLA: A Space Odyssey
November 7, 2023
Since the dawn of NASA’s Apollo program, UCLA has been deeply involved in space exploration. Since 1963, eight Bruins have flown into space. Today, UCLA scientists are helping lay the path to the stars, creating a new constellation of Bruin brilliance.
The Next Trillion Dollar Industry
May 15th, 2023
As space exploration, science, and technology advances at an ever-faster rate, an entirely new economy, the space economy, has sprung up. In fact, by 2040 the space economy is projected to be the next trillion dollar industry. With that realization in mind, the UCLA Anderson Forecast, UCLA SPACE Institute, and the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences hosted its first Space Economy Forecast and panel on May 3rd, 2023.
April 19, 2023
As civilization becomes more and more reliant on satellite technology, we have also become increasingly vulnerable to disruptions caused by solar activity. Known as space weather, eruptions on the sun can pose hazards to satellites, astronauts, and even communications and power infrastructure on the ground — a recent UCLA study even showed how space weather can influence animal behavior.
October 27, 2022
Though not as damaging as extreme space weather events, showers of plasma jets hit Earth’s magnetic shield every day—yet we’re only beginning to understand their effects. Every few minutes, Earth-sized “droplets” of plasma rain down from space toward Earth. Instead of crashing catastrophically to the ground, these droplets, called magnetosheath jets, hit and are deflected by the outer reaches of Earth’s magnetic field. Despite their frequent occurrence near Earth and likely ubiquity across the solar system, the study of magnetosheath jets is young, and there is much we do not know about their origins and behavior.
September 30, 2022
Two CubeSats monitoring space radiation since 2018 have returned to Earth as shooting stars, and the next generation is coming. ELFIN, shown here during radio tests, has revealed new intricacies in the interactions between space plasma waves and electrons in near-Earth space, already yielding a dozen scientific publications.
July 26, 2022
Researchers found that shadowed areas of a pit (pictured here) in the Mare Tranquillitatis region stay consistently cool during the day and night. The pit likely leads to a similarly temperate lava cave. People could potentially live and work in lunar pits and caves with steady temperatures in the 60s.
July 26, 2022
This tantalizing possibility stems from a mind-boggling phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which occurs when massive objects, including the Sun, bend the very spacetime surrounding them. From the right perspective, this warped spacetime magnifies whatever is located behind it, enabling scientists to spot objects that would be otherwise out-of-view, such as distant galaxies or “rogue” planets floating through space with no star.
May 31, 2022
With the launch this spring of the UCLA SPACE Institute, the campus has a new umbrella organization to unite UCLA’s wide array of space-related research activities. The institute — whose name is an acronym for Space and Planetary Sciences, Applications, Communication, and Engineering — will facilitate collaboration among faculty, staff and students from the UCLA College Division of Physical Sciences, the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, the UCLA Anderson School of Management and other campus units.
April 26, 2022
In our interconnected world, satellite power surges can influence our ability to communicate with each other, and to receive vital information that is transmitted through these satellites. The SCOPULI project will investigate the physical mechanisms that produce this hazardous charged particle environment, educate society about the causes and effects of these charging events, and build tools to help government and industry prevent damaging impacts to our satellite infrastructure.
April 12, 2022
Comets, among the oldest objects in the solar system, are icy bodies that were unceremoniously tossed out of the solar system in a gravitational pinball game among the massive outer planets, said David Jewitt. The UCLA professor of planetary science and astronomy co-authored a new study of the comet in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
April 7, 2022
Jessica Watkins, who earned a doctorate in geology from UCLA in 2015, will spend six months on the International Space Station as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission. The launch is scheduled for April 20 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will be the first trip into space for Watkins, who, as a mission specialist, will monitor the spacecraft during the flight’s launch and re-entry and serve as a flight engineer once she arrives at the space station.
March 29, 2022
UCLA scientists have discovered a new source of super-fast, energetic electrons raining down on Earth, a phenomenon that contributes to the colorful aurora borealis but also poses hazards to satellites, spacecraft and astronauts. The researchers observed unexpected, rapid “electron precipitation” from low-Earth orbit using the ELFIN mission, a pair of tiny satellites built and operated on the UCLA campus by undergraduate and graduate students guided by a small team of staff mentors.