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Even as the world is battling aa pandemic, there are still spectacular phenomena occurring in space. NASA recently shared an image of a massive explosion that happened within a star system.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory caught a massive explosion that occurred in the star system V745 Sco around 25,000 light-years away from Earth. This is not the first time NASA has seen outbursts coming from the same star system, however, as these two binary stars are made up of a white dwarf and a red giant that orbit so closely one another. Thus, the gravitational forces from both stars appear to take away from material from the red giant star that ends up on the surface of the white dwarf which accumulates over time.
The result is a massive thermonuclear explosion that NASA has likened to have an impact equivalent to 10 million trillion hydrogen bombs.
In other news, Express reports that the amount of objects that are being sent into space is increasingly becoming a concern, especially as throughout the years, more and more space missions and more objects are being sent into orbit. As of today, there are over 2,000 satellites orbiting the Earth, with 22,000 much larger pieces of space debris, and astronomers are becoming concerned.
With the amount of space junk into orbit, these could pose a risk for future space missions. The debris could potentially lead to collisions as well as interruptions of observations and future studies of the cosmos. They have previously aired their concern regarding Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellites, but the agency has revealed that they are looking to reduce this problem.
This statement from SpaceX also comes as the satellites appeared to have obstructed the view of comet NEOWISE passing by Earth. As of now, there are 500 Starlink satellites into orbit with the hopes of providing internet all over the world. SpaceX has since aimed to get 1,500 satellites into space by the end of the year with an overall goal of 12,000 satellites.
Should this continue further, by the end of the decade, there may be around 50,000 space debris floating around in Earth’s orbit.
