New Horizons is just the fifth spacecraft to reach this great distance, following the legendary Voyagers 1 and 2 and their predecessors, Pioneers 10 and 11. It’s almost 5 billion…
Category: Space
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Leaves its Mark on Asteroid Bennu
Where thrusters fired against the surface, substantial mass movement is apparent. Multiple sub-meter boulders were mobilized by the plumes into a campfire ring–like shape — similar to rings of boulders…
First X-rays from Uranus Discovered
One possibility is that the rings of Uranus are producing X-rays themselves, which is the case for Saturn’s rings. Uranus is surrounded by charged particles such as electrons and protons…
Asteroid 2001 FO32 Will Safely Pass by Earth March 21
Called 2001 FO32, the near-Earth asteroid will make its closest approach at a distance of about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) – or 5 1/4 times the distance from…
Artemis: how ever changing US space policy may push back the next Moon landing
If the current Artemis 3 schedule holds, then 52 years will have passed between Cernan and Schmitt departing the lunar surface in Challenger and the next human visitors to the…
UAE Space Mission Enters Mars Orbit
Guest essay by Eric Worrall The United Arab Emirates is celebrating the success of their first interplanetary space mission, a probe designed to monitor and test the Martian atmosphere. Arab…
Hibernating lemurs may be the key to cryogenic sleep for human space travel
But how can we safely ease humans into hibernation and then bring them back when the time is right, without risking muscle and bone wasting, to name a few challenges?…
Study Proposes Orbital Ceres Colony
Guest essay by Eric Worrall Ceres, once considered an Asteroid but now classified as a dwarf planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, may harbour a significant under surface liquid water…
NASA, Government of Japan Formalize Gateway Partnership for Artemis Program
The agreement also marks NASA’s intent to provide crew opportunities for Japanese astronauts to the Gateway, which will be determined following additional discussions, and documented in a future arrangement.
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus Space Freighter Departs Space Station
The Cygnus spacecraft successfully departed the International Space Station three months after arriving at the space station to deliver about 8,000 pounds of scientific experiments and supplies to the orbiting…
Stellar Jewel Box
Powerful ultraviolet radiation and fast winds from the bluest and hottest stars have blown a big bubble around the cluster. Moving into the surrounding nebula, this torrent of radiation sculpted…
Hubble Captures Unprecedented Fading of Stingray Nebula
Astronomers have caught a rare look at a rapidly fading shroud of gas around an aging star. Archival data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357,…
Mitochondrial Changes Key to Health Problems in Space
Living in space isn’t easy. There are notable impacts on the biology of living things in the harsh environment of space. A team of scientists has now identified a possible…
Data Sonification: A New Cosmic Triad of Sound
From NASA Nov. 30, 2020 A new trio of examples of ‘data sonification’ from NASA missions provides a new method to enjoy an arrangement of cosmic objects. Data sonification translates…
Chinese Lunar Landing Mission Challenges US Space Supremacy
An in-progress low key Chinese robotic sample and return mission is challenging the commonly held assumption that the USA is still the dominant player in deep space missions.
ESA to Launch Space Junk Claw
The European Space Agency has announced plans to launch a space claw, which latches on to pieces of space junk, then drags the junk into a fiery death in Earth’s…
An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal
As of October 2020, the WOW! Signal remains the strongest candidate SETI signal. It has been suggested that the signal was produced by hydrogen clouds from Comets 266/P Christensen and…
Field Geology on Mars Reveals Evidence of Megaflood
Guest “field geology rocks!” by David Middleton Field geology at Mars’ equator points to ancient megafloodBy Blaine Friedlander | November 18, 2020 Floods of unimaginable magnitude once washed through Gale…
16-Year-Old Cosmic Mystery Solved, Revealing Stellar Missing Link
In 2004, scientists with NASA’s space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spotted an object unlike any they’d seen before in our Milky Way galaxy: a large, faint blob of gas with…
Birth of magnetar from colossal collision potentially spotted for first time
After examining the incredibly bright burst with optical, X-ray, near-infrared and radio wavelengths, a Northwestern University-led astrophysics team believes it potentially spotted the birth of a magnetar.
Aurora-Chasing Citizen Scientists Help Discover A New Feature of STEVE
Now named STEVE, or Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, this phenomenon is still new to scientists, who are working to understand all its details. What they do know is that…
Fancy Leaving the Planet? Virgin Galactic Announces a November Flight
Virgin Galactic has announced their first flight from Spaceport America to be launched from November 19-23rd.
Seeing dark matter in a new light
A small team of astronomers have found a new way to ‘see’ the elusive dark matter haloes that surround galaxies, with a new technique 10 times more precise than the…
Water on ancient Mars
There’s a long-standing question in planetary science about the origin of water on Earth, Mars and other large bodies such as the moon. One hypothesis says that it came from…
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