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Messier 57 – The Ring Nebula Welcome back to Messier Monday! We continue our tribute to our dear friend, Tammy Plotner, by looking at the the Big Ring itself, the planetary nebula known as Messier 57. Enjoy! In the 18th century, while searching the night sky for comets, French astronomer Charles Messier kept noting the presence of fixed, diffuse objects in the night sky. In time, he would come to compile a list of approximately 100 of these objects, with the purpose of making sure that astronomers did not mistake them for comets. However, this list – known as the Messier Catalog – would goRead More →

Rare Element Could Point the Way to Past Life on Mars Over the past few decades, our ongoing studies of Mars have revealed some very fascinating things about the planet. In the 1960s and early 70s, the Mariner probes revealed that Mars was a dry, frigid planet that was most likely devoid of life. But as our understanding of the planet has deepened, it has come to be known that Mars once had a warmer, wetter environment that could have supported life. This in turn has inspired multiple missions whose purpose it has been to find evidence of this past life. The key questions inRead More →

Hubble Spots Unique Object in the Main Asteroid Belt In 1990, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was deployed into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). As one of NASA’s Great Observatories – along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope – this instrument remains one of NASA’s larger and more versatile missions. Even after twenty-seven years of service, Hubble continues to make intriguing discoveries, both within our Solar System and beyond. The latest discovery was made by a team of international astronomers led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. Using Hubble, they spotted a unique objectRead More →

Where Do We Go Next? Building the Deep Space Gateway I don’t have to tell you that the vision of human space exploration in the Solar System has kind of stalled. Half a century ago, humans set foot on the Moon, and we haven’t been back since. Instead, we’ve thoroughly explored every cubic meter of low Earth orbit, going around and around the Earth. In fact, back in 2016, the International Space Station celebrated 100,000 orbits around the Earth. The space shuttle was the last US vehicle capable of taking humans up into orbit, and it was retired back in 2011. So things look prettyRead More →

Scientists Urge Europe to Stick With “Armageddon”-style Asteroid Mission For decades, scientists have known that in near-Earth space there are thousands of comets and asteroids that periodically cross Earth’s orbit. These Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are routinely tracked by NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) to make sure that none pose a risk of collision with our planet. Various programs and missions have also been proposed to divert or destroy any asteroids that might pass too closely to Earth in the future. One such mission is the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA), a collaborative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).Read More →

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sampler Slingshots Around Earth Friday, Sept. 21 – Catch It If You Can! Artist’s concept shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft passing by Earth on Sept. 22, 2017. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Barely a year after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx robotic asteroid sampler launched on a trailblazing mission to snatch a soil sample from a pristine asteroid and return it to Earth for research analysis, the probe is speeding back home for a swift slingshot around our home planet on Friday Sept. 22 to gain a gravity assist speed boost required to complete its journey to theRead More →

New Study Says a Fast Radio Burst Happens Every Second in the Universe When astronomers first noted the detection of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) in 2007 (aka. the Lorimer Burst), they were both astounded and intrigued. This high-energy burst of radio pulses, which lasted only a few milliseconds, appeared to be coming from outside of our galaxy. Since that time, astronomers have found evidence of many FRBs in previously-recorded data, and are still speculated as to what causes them. Thanks to subsequent discoveries and research, astronomers now know that FRBs are far more common than previously thought. In fact, according to a new studyRead More →

More Surface Ice on Mercury than Previously Thought, says New Study Back in 2012, scientists were delighted to discover that within the polar regions of Mercury, vast amounts of water ice were detected. While the existence of water ice in this permanently-shaded region had been the subject of speculation for about 20 years, it was only after the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft studied the polar region that this was confirmed. Based on the MESSENGER data, it was estimated that Mercury could have between 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of water ice at both poles, and that the ice couldRead More →

New Study Says Primordial Asteroid Belt was Empty Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lies a disk of rocks, small bodies and planetoids known as the Main Asteroid Belt. The existence of this Belt was first theorized in the 18th century, based on observations that indicated a regular pattern in the orbits of Solar planets. By the following century, regular discoveries began to be made in the space between Mars and Jupiter, prompting astronomers to theorize where the Belt came from. For a long time, scientists debated whether the Belt was the remains of a planet that broke up, or remnants left over fromRead More →