News (Page 799)

Catch Sight of Humanity Star… While You Can Humanity Star: shinny star-ball, or light pollution menace? Credit: Humanity Star. It’s a question I’ve gotten lots, now that the calendar has flipped over from February to March. When will we get our first good look at the Humanity Star reflector satellite? The Humanity Star satellite was a surprise payload object placed on the January 21st, 2018 inaugural orbital launch for Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket. Said launch occurred at Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-1 on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, placing Humanity Star in a 92 minute orbit inclined 83 degrees to the equator. Launch! Electron’s inauguralRead More →

Astronomers See A Dead Star Come Back To Life Thanks To A Donor Star It’s not exactly an organ donor, but a star in the direction of the hyper-populated core of the Milky Way donating some of its mass to a dormant neighbor. The result? The dormant neighbor sprung back to life with an X-ray burst captured by the ESA‘s INTEGRAL (INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) space observatory. “INTEGRAL caught a unique moment in the birth of a rare binary system” – Enrico Bozzo, University of Geneva. The neighbors have likely been paired together for billions of years, which is not in itself noteworthy: stars oftenRead More →

Scientists Find that Earth Bacteria Could Thrive on Enceladus For decades, ever since the Pioneer and Voyager missions passed through the outer Solar System, scientists have speculated that life might exist within icy bodies like Jupiter’s moon Europa. However, thanks the Cassini mission, scientists now believe that other moons in the outer Solar System – such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus – could possibly harbor life as well. For instance, Cassini observed plume activity coming from Enceladus’ southern polar region that indicated the presence of hydrothermal activity inside. What’s more, these plumes contained organic molecules and hydrated minerals, which are potential indications of life. To seeRead More →

Astronaut Scott Tingle Was Able To Control A Ground-Based Robot… From Space. If something called “Project METERON” sounds to you like a sinister project involving astronauts, robots, the International Space Station, and artificial intelligence, I don’t blame you. Because that’s what it is (except for the sinister part.) In fact, the Meteron Project (Multi-Purpose End-to-End Robotic Operation Network) is not sinister at all, but a friendly collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR.) The idea behind the project is to place an artificially intelligent robot here on Earth under the direct control of an astronaut 400 km above theRead More →

Engineers Develop a Whole New Way to Use Curiosity’s Drill After a Recent Hardware Failure Since it landed on Mars in 2012, the Curiosity rover has used its drill to gather samples from a total of 15 sites. These samples are then deposited into two of Curiosity’s laboratory instruments – the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) or the Chemistry and Mineralogy X-ray Diffraction (CheMin) instrument – where they are examined to tell us more about the Red Planet’s history and evolution. Unfortunately, in December of 2016, a key part of the drill stopped working when a faulty motor prevented the bit from extending and retractingRead More →

Saturn Photobombs a Picture of the Martian Moon Phobos The ESA’s Mars Express probe has been studying Mars and its Moons for many years. While there are several missions currently in orbit around Mars, Mars Express‘s near-polar elliptical orbit gives it some advantages over the others. For one, its orbital path takes it closer to Phobos than any other spacecraft, which allows it to periodically observe the moon from distances of around 150 km (93 mi). Because of this, the probe is in an ideal position to study Mars’ moons and capture images of them. On occasion, this allows for some interesting photo opportunities. ForRead More →

Book Review: Inventing a Space Mission Inventing a Space Mission Where will science’s next big advance arise? Like Archimedes, maybe someone will jump up out of a tub of hot water, shout ‘Eureka’ and direct everyone to use the next great discovery. Or maybe some science-bureaucrats will gather together via some on-line meeting tool and choose to chase down the most promising opportunity. Given that experiments seem to be getting harder and harder to undertake, then it’s no surprise that one hugely successful space observatory arose from the latter. This is the main message of the book “Inventing a Space Mission – the Story ofRead More →