Jeremy Rehm
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Parker Solar Probe Team Hears First Whispers of the Solar Wind’s Birth
There’s a wind that emanates from the Sun, and it blows not like a soft whistle but like a hurricane’s scream. Made of electrons, protons and heavier ions, the solar wind courses through the solar system at roughly 1 million mph (1.6 million kph), barreling over everything in its path.
Five Years After the Flyby, 10 Cool Things We Know About Pluto
Five years ago today, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft — designed, built and operated by Johns Hopkins APL — conducted the first close-up exploration of Pluto. Since then, scientists have uncovered numerous surprising, revolutionary and downright unbelievable things about Pluto and its moons that have transformed our view of these distant icy worlds.
New Space Instrument Technology Promises Unmatched Ability to Track Pollutants
Funded by NASA, Space Exploration Sector researchers are working on an instrument that will enable scientists to track and source air pollutants with unprecedented detail — an especially valuable tool as the unanticipated air-quality experiment of COVID-19 lockdowns gradually ends.
Predicting the Unpredictable — The Dynamics of DART’s Dive Into an Asteroid
What will happen after NASA’s DART spacecraft finally collides with its target asteroid? With myriad potential outcomes, and little known about the asteroid, the answer seems almost impossible to determine. Yet modelers from Johns Hopkins APL are slowly narrowing the range of possibilities, and providing the tools that will be needed to defend Earth from a c
Iron Meteorite ‘Fingerprints’ Reveal New Details About Planet Formation
A new study that included Johns Hopkins APL planetary scientist Nancy Chabot reveals new details about iron meteorites and the formation of planets during the solar system’s youth, but it also highlights that scientists may currently be missing a large chunk of the meteorite record from these early planetary bodies.
Simulations Show Lander Exhaust Could Cloud Studies of Lunar Ices
Renewed efforts to put humans on the Moon could eventually lead to more landers touching down on the lunar surface. But a new study led by Johns Hopkins APL scientists shows exhaust from such landers can quickly spread and potentially contaminate scientifically valuable ices near the Moon’s poles.
New Simulations Unravel Mystery Behind Aurora’s ‘String of Pearls’
Using novel computer models and some of the world’s largest supercomputers, researchers in the APL-led Center for Geospace Storms have unraveled a longstanding mystery of why the aurora sometimes takes the shape of beads in the sky, and whether they portend magnetic mayhem in the near future.
Turning Down the Noise with Quantum Control
Quantum computers might be the key to developing everything from better materials to novel medical drugs, but they’re currently hampered by environmental noise. APL researchers are building the tools to overcome this problem by leveraging their expertise in a field that many here are quite familiar with: control theory.
OSIRIS-REx and the Challenge to Sample an Asteroid
Today, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission will make history by slowly touching down on the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu for a few seconds and collecting a small sample to return to Earth. But those few seconds required some creative thinking on the part of scientists and engineers, and APL's Small Body Mapping Tool played a big part. Learn how in a new video relea
Craters on Bennu Hint at When Asteroid Arrived to Its Near-Earth Neighborhood
Asteroid Bennu, the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, seems to be a relatively recent newcomer to near-Earth space, according to a remote analysis of the asteroid’s craters that included APL researcher Olivier Barnouin.
Despite Obstacles, Johns Hopkins APL Team Delivers First Instrument for NASA’s Lucy Mission
Despite technical hurdles, the COVID-19 pandemic and a snowstorm, the APL team building L’LORRI — the imaging and navigational instrument for NASA’s Lucy mission — delivered their instrument last Monday, eight weeks earlier than was expected near the start of the pandemic.
Special Journal Issue Spotlights Future Exploration of Ice Giants and Their Moons
A special journal issue from the Royal Society highlights a conference organized in part by APL researchers on the current knowledge and future exploration of the solar system’s ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, and their moons.
Surer Signs of Life
If we ever think we’ve found signs of life elsewhere in the solar system, how would we convince ourselves that they’re real? A research team at APL is developing new palm-sized tools to help address that problem, targeting some of the strongest molecular signs of life, and even designing a way to sequence genetic material found on another world.
New Exoplanet Research Method Could Uncover Thousands of Habitable Worlds
A new technique to study the atmospheres of exoplanets that never pass in front of or behind their stars could be revolutionary for exoplanet research, opening up a huge population of potentially habitable planets that have been inaccessible to scientific study.
Study Reveals MESSENGER Watched a Meteoroid Strike Mercury
A team of physicists that includes Johns Hopkins APL’s Leonardo Regoli reveals in a recent study that the Lab-operated MESSENGER spacecraft witnessed a meteoroid impact on the planet Mercury more than seven years ago. It’s the first impact ever observed on the surface of another planet.
Little Moon Io Helps Jupiter Accelerate Charged Particles to Incredible Speed
Recent analyses of data fortuitously collected by an APL-built instrument on NASA’s Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft reveal the planet’s little moon Io packs quite a punch, accelerating protons and other charged particles to millions of miles of per hour through an invisible link between itself and Jupiter.
A New Conceptual Mission Proposes to Study Earth Like an Exoplanet
A new conceptual mission developed by Johns Hopkins APL researchers proposes to send a small spacecraft to view Earth as if it were a potentially habitable exoplanet and help validate whether the methods currently used to look for habitable worlds can even detect life on the one planet where we know it does exist.
Parker Solar Probe Captures First Complete View of Venus Orbital Dust Ring
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe captured the first complete view of Venus’ dust ring, a band of particles that stretches for the entirety of the planet’s path around the Sun.
The Subset Seekers
Data scientists from Johns Hopkins APL and clinicians used artificial intelligence to predict whether a COVID-19 patient is likely to become a severe or mild case. But the process has turned up its own surprises about the individuality of this disease and underscored the need to tailor a person’s medical treatment precisely.
Solar Mission Reveals New Details About Venus’ Unusual Magnetic Field
A new study, led by Johns Hopkins APL researchers using data from Solar Orbiter’s first flyby of Venus, found the planet’s unusual magnetic field can still accelerate particles to millions of miles per hour — a finding valuable to understanding magnetospheres around planets outside our solar system.