What Would a Realistic Space Battle Look Like? Science fiction space movies can do a poor job of educating people about space. In the movies, hot-shot pilots direct their dueling space ships through space as if they’re flying through an atmosphere. They bank and turn and perform loops and rolls, maybe throw in a quick […]
The Crew of the ISS has Found the Source of the Station’s Air Leak The ISS crew has found the source of the elusive leak using (wait for it!) tea leaves! The hole is now patched, but a permanent fix is still needed. The post The Crew of the ISS has Found the Source of […]
We use the transit method to find other planets. Which extraterrestrial civilizations could use the transit method to find Earth? We have found more than 4,000 planets orbiting other stars. Life on distant worlds could find us in the same way. The post We use the transit method to find other planets. Which extraterrestrial civilizations […]
Improved model shows gamma rays and gold at merging neutron stars An international team of astrophysicists under Dutch leadership has demonstrated with an improved model that colliding neutron stars can emit gamma rays. Old models did not predict this and faltered since the merging of two neutron stars in 2017 that released gamma rays. The […]
Smile, wave: Some exoplanets may be able to see us, too Three decades after Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that Voyager 1 snap Earth’s picture from billions of miles away—resulting in the iconic Pale Blue Dot photograph—two astronomers now offer another unique cosmic perspective: phys.org Go to Source
AI and photonics join forces to make it easier to find ‘new Earths’ Australian scientists have developed a new type of sensor to measure and correct the distortion of starlight caused by viewing through the Earth’s atmosphere, which should make it easier to study the possibility of life on distant planets. phys.org Go to Source
NGC 1624-2 has a complex magnetospheric structure, observations reveal Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), astronomers have investigated a magnetized O-type star known as NGC 1624-2. Results of the study, presented in a paper published October 15 on the arXiv pre-print server, indicate that the star has a complex magnetospheric structure, […]
The Oxygen Supply has Failed in the Russian Zvezda Module of the ISS. Don’t Worry, the Astronauts aren’t in Danger, but the Station is Showing its Age Crews aboard the ISS are working to repair the leak, which posed no significant risk. Unfortunately, it shows that the ISS is getting on in years! The post […]
Success! OSIRIS-REx Touches Asteroid Bennu to Collect Samples Out in the asteroid belt, 207 million miles (334 million km) from Earth, a little spacecraft briefly touched down on the surface of Asteroid Bennu today, attempting to collect samples of dust and rocks. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) spent about […]
Wow, Betelgeuse Might Be 25% Closer than Previously Believed In the last year, Betelgeuse has experienced two episodes of dimming. Normally, it’s one of the ten brightest stars in the sky, and astrophysicists and astronomers got busy trying to understand what was happening with the red supergiant. Different research came up with some possible answers: […]
It’s still possible to detect the site of the 2017 kilonova explosion It’s been over a thousand days since the historic kilonova observation, and yet the region continues to emit X-rays, long after models predicted they should have faded away. What’s going on? August 2017 was a pretty momentous month in astronomy. The gravitational wave […]
Watch “Live” as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Nabs an Asteroid Sample Today’s the day! The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is going to reach out and boop asteroid Bennu! You can watch the broadcast here as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission attempts to collect a sample of an asteroid on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 6:12 […]
Technology ready for back-up detector X-IFU in Athena space telescope In 2031, ESA launches its new X-ray space telescope Athena. SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research plays a large role in building one of its two instruments, the X-IFU spectrometer, by producing the camera plus the back-up detectors. SRON scientists have now successfully developed detectors […]
NASA probe Osiris-Rex set to ‘kiss’ asteroid Bennu in historic mission After a four-year journey, NASA’s robotic spacecraft Osiris-Rex will descend to asteroid Bennu’s boulder-strewn surface on Tuesday, touching down for a few seconds to collect rock and dust samples in a precision operation 200 million miles (330 million kilometers) from Earth. phys.org Go to […]
Ultraviolet shines light on origins of the solar system In the search to discover the origins of our solar system, an international team of researchers, including planetary scientist and cosmochemist James Lyons of Arizona State University, has compared the composition of the Sun to the composition of the most ancient materials that formed in our […]
New CubeSat will observe the remnants of massive supernovas Scientists at CU Boulder are developing a satellite about the size of a toaster oven to explore one of the cosmos’ most fundamental mysteries: How did radiation from stars punch its way out of the first galaxies to fundamentally alter the make-up of the universe as […]
Evidence of broadside collision with dwarf galaxy discovered in Milky Way Nearly 3 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy plunged into the center of the Milky Way and was ripped apart by the gravitational forces of the collision. Astrophysicists announced today that the merger produced a series of telltale shell-like formations of stars in the […]
Djorgovski 2 hosts multiple stellar populations, study suggests Astronomers have performed spectroscopic observations of a globular cluster (GC) known as Djorgovski 2 and obtained chemical abundances of the cluster’s seven stars. The results suggest that Djorgovski 2 contains multiple stellar populations. The finding was detailed in a paper published October 8 on the arXiv pre-print […]
You’ll Experience 200 Times More Radiation Standing on the Moon than Standing on the Earth January 31, 2021, will mark 50 years since the launch of Apollo 14. This historic mission was the first to broadcast a color television signal from the surface of the Moon and marked the heroic return to space of America’s […]
NASA and Seven Countries Sign the Artemis Accords for the Exploration of the Moon. Russia Declined to Participate It looks like Russia is thumbing its nose at international cooperation on the Moon. They’ve refused to sign the Artemis Accords, which are a set of rules governing Lunar exploration. NASA and seven other countries have signed […]
