News (Page 896)

Is Time To Go Back to Uranus and Neptune? Revisiting Ice Giants of the Solar System I look forward to all the future missions that NASA is going to be sending out in the Solar System. Here, check this out. You can use NASA’s website to show you all the future missions. Here’s everything planned for the future, here’s everything going to Mars. Now, let’s look and see what missions are planned for the outer planets of the Solar System, especially Uranus and Neptune. Oh, that’s so sad… there’s nothing. Uranus, seen by Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL It’s been decades since humanity had anRead More →

Watch Live 24-Hour Webcast for International Asteroid Day Every day, Earth is hit by 60 to 300 metric tons of space dust and smaller meteors. But sometimes, larger and more dangerous space rocks plummet to Earth, such as on June 30, 1908 when an estimated 40 meter-wide meteoroid exploded over the Tunguska, Siberia region in Russia, devastating 2000 sq. kilometers (770 square miles) of forest. As the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor event attests, the likelihood of a similar event happening again is not an “if” but a “when.” To raise public awareness about asteroid impact hazards and to urge political leaders to work together to beRead More →

Carnival of Space #515 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brad Rogers at The Evolving Planet blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #515. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out,Read More →

Amazing New Views of Betelgeuse Courtesy of ALMA This orange blob is the nearby star Betelgeuse, as imaged recently by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA/ESO/NRAO Just. Wow. An angry monster lurks in the shoulder of the Hunter. We’re talking about the red giant star Betelgeuse, also known as Alpha Orionis in the constellation Orion. Recently, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) gave us an amazing view of Betelgeuse, one of the very few stars that is large enough to be resolved as anything more than a point of light. Located 650 light years distant, Betelgeuse is destined to live fast, and die young. TheRead More →

SpaceX Accomplishes Double Headed American Space Spectacular – 2 Launches and 2 Landings in 2 Days from 2 Coasts: Gallery Liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 on June 25 at 1:25 p.m. PDT (4:25 p.m. EDT) carrying ten Iridium Next mobile voice and data relay communications satellites to low Earth orbit on the Iridium-2 mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Credit: SpaceX KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – With Sunday’s successful Falcon 9 blastoff for Iridium Communications joining rocketry’s history books, Elon Musk’s SpaceX accomplished a double headed American space spectacular this weekend with 2 launches and 2 booster landings in 2 days from 2Read More →

No, NASA (Still) Has Not Discovered Proof of Alien Life It seems that every few months or so, breathless claims surface on the internet that NASA is about to make an Earth-shattering announcement about aliens … or UFOs … or killer asteroids … or some other sensational assertion. Or better yet, NASA is hiding these ‘facts’ from us. The latest claims says that “NASA Is About to Announce the Discovery of Intelligent Alien Life,” and this one might be receiving more attention and credence than usual because the group making the claim is Anonymous, the notorious hacking and activist group. However, before we get intoRead More →

BulgariaSat-1 Blazes to Orbit on Used SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket as Breakthrough Booster Lands 2nd Time on Oceanic Platform Blastoff of 2nd flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 with 1st geostationary communications for Bulgaria at 3:10 p.m. EDT on June 23, 2017, carrying BulgariaSat-1 to orbit from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – In another breakthrough milestone aimed at slashing the high cost of rocketry, the innovators at billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a ‘used’ rocket for only the second time in history – that blazed a path to orbit with its BulgariaSat-1Read More →

Weekly Space Hangout – June 23, 2017: NEOShield-2 Project Team Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: This week’s special guests are the NEOShield-2 Project Team. NEOShield-2 is a 100% European Union funded project to develop technologies to avoid an asteroid impact on Earth. Guests: Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter) Their stories this week: We use a tool called Trello to submit and vote on stories we would like to see covered each week, and then Fraser will be selecting the stories from there. Here is the link to the Trello WSH page (http://bit.ly/WSHVote), which you can see without logging in. If you’d like toRead More →

Snake Rovers Might be the Best Way to Explore the Surface and Tunnels on Mars Human space exploration is going to kick into high gear in the coming decades. Within the inner Solar System alone, missions are being planned that will see robotic explorers and crews sent to Near Earth Objects (NEOs), back to the Moon, and even on to Mars. Beyond that, there are even plans to send robotic missions to Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and other “ocean worlds” to look for signs of life. In all cases, questions natural arise as to what kinds of missions will be most suited to them. In theRead More →

2nd SpaceX Recycled Falcon 9 Rocket Launching 1st Bulgarian GeoComSat June 23, Plus Potential Weekend Launch ‘Doubleheader’ – Watch Live Flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage arrives at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida slated for launch of BulgariaSat-1 on June 23, 2017. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – For only the second time in history, SpaceX will launch a ‘flight-proven’ Falcon 9 rocket this Friday afternoon and the payload this time for this remarkable and science fictionesque milestone is the first geostationary communications satellite for the nation of Bulgaria. Blastoff of the BulgariaSat-1 communications satellite for commercial broadbandRead More →

Hubble Finds a Dead Galaxy that was Finished Making Stars Just a Billion Years After the Big Bang Thanks to recent improvements in space-based and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have been able to probe deeper into the Universe than ever before. By looking billions of years back in time, we are able to test our theories about the history of galactic formation and evolution. Unfortunately, studying the very early Universe is a daunting task, and one that is beyond the capabilities of our current instruments. But by combining the power of the Hubble Space Telescope with a technique known as gravitational lensing, a team of astronomersRead More →

Saturn Rides Bareback On The Galactic Dark Horse The bright dot is Saturn and it shines on the back of the Galactic Dark Horse, a collection of dark nebulae in the constellation Ophiuchus that resembles a prancing horse. The head is to the right with a wisp of a tail to the left. The photo, taken on June 20, 2017, has been turned 90° to the right, so the horse stands upright. Credit: Bob King I didn’t notice it with the naked eye, but as soon as the time exposure ended and I looked at the camera’s back display, there it was — Saturn ridingRead More →

See NASA’s Curiosity Rover Simultaneously from Orbit and Red Planet’s Surface Climbing Mount Sharp NASA’s Curiosity rover as seen simultaneously on Mars surface and from orbit on Sol 1717, June 5, 2017. The robot snapped this self portrait mosaic view while approaching Vera Rubin Ridge at the base of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater – backdropped by distant crater rim. This navcam camera mosaic was stitched from raw images and colorized. Inset shows overhead orbital view of Curiosity amid rocky mountainside terrain taken the same day by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo You can catch a glimpse of what its likeRead More →

Is Human Hibernation Possible? Going to Sleep for Long Duration Spaceflight We’ve spent a few articles on Universe Today talking about just how difficult it’s going to be to travel to other stars. Sending tiny unmanned probes across the vast gulfs between stars is still mostly science fiction. But to send humans on that journey? That’s just a level of technology beyond comprehension. For example, the nearest star is Proxima Centauri, located a mere 4.25 light years away. Just for comparison, the Voyager spacecraft, the most distant human objects ever built by humans, would need about 50,000 years to make that journey. I don’t knowRead More →

Let’s Clean up the Space Junk with Magnetic Space Tugs After 50 years of sending rockets, satellites, and payloads into orbit, humanity has created something of a “space junk” problem. Recent estimates indicate that there are more than 170 million pieces of debris up there, ranging in size from less than 1 cm (o.4 in) to a few meters in diameter. Not only does this junk threaten spacecraft and the ISS, but collisions between bits of debris can cause more to form, a phenomena known as the Kessler Effect. And thanks to the growth of the commercial aerospace industry and the development of small satellites,Read More →

LISA is On! Gravitational Wave Detection is Going to Space The discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment in 2015 sent ripples through the scientific community. Originally predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the confirmation of these waves (and two subsequent detections) solved a long-standing cosmological mystery. In addition to bending the fabric of space-time, it is now known that gravity can also create perturbations that can be detected billions of light-years away. Seeking to capitalize on these discoveries and conduct new and exciting research into gravitational waves, the European Space Agency (ESA) recently green-lighted the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. ConsistingRead More →

An Astronomical Detective Tale and the Moon of 2007 OR10 These two images reveal a moon orbiting the dwarf planet2007 OR10. NASA/Hubble/ESA/STScI It isn’t every day we get a new moon added to the list of solar system satellites. The combined observational power of three observatories — Kepler, Herschel and Hubble — led an astronomical detective tale to its climatic conclusion: distant Kuiper Belt Object 2007 OR10 has a tiny moon. The dwarf planet itself is an enigma wrapped in a mystery: with a long orbit taking it out to a distant aphelion 101 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, back into the environs ofRead More →

Astronomy Cast Ep. 453: Favorite Things We’ve Done These 10 Years 10 years of Astronomy Cast… wow. It’s been a long, fun journey. What are some of our favorite episodes and adventures over the decade we’ve been doing this show. Visit the Astronomy Cast Page to subscribe to the audio podcast! We usually record Astronomy Cast as a live Google+ Hangout on Air every Friday at 1:30 pm Pacific / 4:30 pm Eastern. You can watch here on Universe Today or from the Astronomy Cast Google+ page. The post Astronomy Cast Ep. 453: Favorite Things We’ve Done These 10 Years appeared first on Universe Today.Read More →

NASA Announces 10, That’s Right 10! New Planets in Their Star’s Habitable Zone The Kepler space telescope is surely the gift that keeps on giving. After being deployed in 2009, it went on to detect a total of 2,335 confirmed exoplanets and 582 multi-planet systems. Even after two of its reaction wheels failed, it carried on with its K2 mission, which has discovered an additional 520 candidates, 148 of which have been confirmed. And with yet another extension, which will last beyond 2018, it shows no signs of stopping! In the most recent catalog to be released by the Kepler mission, an additional 219 new planetRead More →

Carnival of Space #514 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Brad Rogers at The Evolving Planet blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #514. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out,Read More →