News (Page 800)

NASA is Sending a Helicopter to Mars as Part of the 2020 Rover At present, there are over a dozen robotic missions exploring the atmosphere and surface of Mars. These include, among others, the Curiosity rover, the Opportunity rover, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter, and the soon-to-arrive InSight Lander. In the coming decade, many more missions are planned. For instance, NASA plans to expand on what Curiosity has accomplished by sending the Mars 2020 rover to conduct a sample-return mission. According to a recent announcement issued by NASA, this mission will also includeRead More →

Evidence for Thousands of Black Holes Buzzing Around the Center of the Milky Way Since the 1970s, astronomers have understood that a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) resides at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Located about 26,000 light-years from Earth between the Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations, this black hole has come to be known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Measuring 44 million km across, this object is roughly 4 million times as massive as our Sun and exerts a tremendous gravitational pull. Since that time, astronomers have discovered that most massive galaxies have SMBHs at their core, which is what separates those that haveRead More →

The Future of Our Sun is Still a Bit of a Puzzle. What Will Happen When it Dies? The life cycle of our Sun began roughly 4.6 billion years ago. In roughly 4.5 to 5.5 billion years, when it depletes its supply of hydrogen and helium, it will enter into its Red Giant Branch (RGB) phase, where it will expand to several times its current size and maybe even consume Earth! And then, when it has reached the end of its life-cycle, it is believed that it will blow off its outer layers and become a white dwarf. Until recently, astronomers were not certain howRead More →

Jupiter and Venus Change Earth’s Orbit Every 405,000 Years It is a well-known fact among Earth scientists that our planet periodically undergoes major changes in its climate. Over the course of the past 200 million years, our planet has experienced four major geological periods (the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous and Cenozoic) and one major ice age (the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation), all of which had a drastic impact on plant and animal life, as well as effecting the course of species evolution. For decades, geologists have also understood that these changes are due in part to gradual shifts in the Earth’s orbit, which are caused by VenusRead More →

The Giant Planets in the Solar System Stunted the Growth of Mars For centuries, astronomers and scientists have sought to understand how our Solar System came to be. Since that time, two theories have become commonly-accepted that explain how it formed and evolved over time. These are the Nebular Hypothesis and the Nice Model, respectively. Whereas the former contends that the Sun and planets formed from a large cloud of dust and gas, the latter maintains the giant planets have migrated since their formation. This is what has led to the Solar System as we know it today. However, an enduring mystery about these theoriesRead More →

China is Working on Their Own Reusable Rocket: the First Stage of the Long March-8, Which Could Launch in 2021 In recent decades, China’s space program has advanced considerably. In addition to deploying their first space station (Tiangong-1) and developing a modern rockets (the Long March 5), the nation has also sent robotic mission to the lunar surface and plans to conduct crewed missions there in the coming years. To this end, China is looking to create a new series of rockets that will enable them to explore the Moon and maybe even Mars. One of the rockets they use to accomplish these goals isRead More →