Stellar propeller
The fastest spinning white dwarf ever seen has just been clocked in at one rotation every 25 seconds. The star is the second known example of a magnetic propeller, meaning its spin is powered by pulling material from a nearby companion star and then flinging it into space at 3,000 km/s.
DART launches
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully launched on 24 November and is now on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos. In September 2022, the spacecraft will collide with the smaller of the pair, altering its orbit to test if the same technique could one day be used to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
Distant water
Water has been detected in a galaxy whose light left it when the Universe was just 780 million years old – earlier than previously thought possible. An explanation could lie in the fact it is undergoing a merger, which could be speeding up star formation to create enough oxygen to form H 2O.
Chip off the old Moon
Recent spectral analysis of near-Earth asteroid Kamo‘oalewa shows it has a similar composition to the Moon, suggesting it could have been chipped off by an impact. The space rock is around 50m in size and is a quasi-satellite, meaning it takes the same time to orbit the Sun as Earth does, but along a different path.
Hubble’s future
Funding for the Hubble Space Telescope has been extended to June 2026. However, the telescope has entered safe mode multiple times over the last year, the most recent of which occurred on 25 October. Though it did recover, it raises questions over how long the telescope will last.
Uncovering habitable planets
A new mission is set to discover whether any of our nearest neighbouring stars have planets like our own. The space telescope, called TOLIMAN, will look for rocky planets in the ‘goldilocks’ zones of their stars, where liquid water can pool on the surface.